| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: lethal weapons, poisoned organs in a jar, a door with a
shot-hole through the panel, behind which a man fell
dead. I cannot fancy why they should preserve them
unless it were against the Judgment Day. At length, as
you continue to descend, you see a peep of yellow
gaslight and hear a jostling, whispering noise ahead;
next moment you turn a corner, and there, in a
whitewashed passage, is a machinery belt industriously
turning on its wheels. You would think the engine had
grown there of its own accord, like a cellar fungus, and
would soon spin itself out and fill the vaults from end
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: tricked into a marriage and disillusioned, the cashier, the passionate
lover who had committed a crime for Aquilina's sake. His inmost nature
had suddenly asserted itself. His brain had expanded, his senses had
developed. His thoughts comprehended the whole world; he saw all the
things of earth as if he had been raised to some high pinnacle above
the world.
Until that evening at the play he had loved Aquilina to distraction.
Rather than give her up he would have shut his eyes to her
infidelities; and now all that blind passion had passed away as a
cloud vanishes in the sunlight.
Jenny was delighted to succeed to her mistress' position and fortune,
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey: Ring and Whitie stood waiting for him. Taking to the open aisles
and patches of the sage, he walked guardedly, careful not to
stumble or step in dust or strike against spreading
sage-branches.
If he were burdened he did not feel it. From time to time, when
he passed out of the black lines of shade into the wan starlight,
he glanced at the white face of the girl lying in his arms. She
had not awakened from her sleep or stupor. He did not rest until
he cleared the black gate of the canyon. Then he leaned against a
stone breast-high to him and gently released the girl from his
hold. His brow and hair and the palms of his hands were wet, and
Riders of the Purple Sage |
