| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: presented the interior of an immensely long and rectangular vault
or tunnel, with low walls, smooth, white, and without
interruption or device. Certain accessory points of the design
served well to convey the idea that this excavation lay at an
exceeding depth below the surface of the earth. No outlet was
observed in any portion of its vast extent, and no torch,
or other artificial source of light was discernible; yet a flood
of intense rays rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a
ghastly and inappropriate splendour.
I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory
nerve which rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with
The Fall of the House of Usher |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Ferber: chin-chucking lieutenant tremble in his frame on the wall.
When it was all over Frau Nirlanger beckoned me, and
she, Dr. von Gerhard and I stole out into the hall and
stood at the foot of the stairway, discussing our plans
for the future, and trying to smile as we talked of this
plan and that. Frau Nirlanger, in the pretty white gown,
was looking haggard and distrait. The oogly husband was
still in the dining room, finishing the beer and punch,
of which he had already taken too much.
"A tiny apartment we have taken," said Frau
Nirlanger, softly. "It is better so. Then I shall have
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Country Doctor by Honore de Balzac: resumed his talk.
"I should like to find a husband for my Fosseuse. I should be glad to
make over one of my farms to some good fellow who would make her
happy. And she would be happy. The poor girl would love her children
to distraction; for motherhood, which develops the whole of a woman's
nature, would give full scope to her overflowing sentiments. She has
never cared for any one, however. Yet her impressionable nature is a
danger to her. She knows this herself, and when she saw that I
recognized it, she admitted the excitability of her temperament to me.
She belongs to the small minority of women whom the slightest contact
with others causes to vibrate perilously; so that she must be made to
|
