| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne: mounting to my brain, and rival him in expressions of admiration?
For aught I knew, Captain Nemo and his companion might be able to exchange
thoughts by means of signs previously agreed upon. So, for want of better,
I talked to myself; I declaimed in the copper box which covered my head,
thereby expending more air in vain words than was perhaps wise.
Various kinds of isis, clusters of pure tuft-coral, prickly fungi,
and anemones formed a brilliant garden of flowers, decked with their
collarettes of blue tentacles, sea-stars studding the sandy bottom.
It was a real grief to me to crush under my feet the brilliant
specimens of molluscs which strewed the ground by thousands,
of hammerheads, donaciae (veritable bounding shells), of staircases,
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Octopus by Frank Norris: saturated with glorious light, brilliant, radiant, alluring. He
saw the sweet simplicity of her carriage, the statuesque evenness
of the contours of her figure, the single, deep swell of her
bosom, the solid masses of her hair. He remembered the small
contradictory suggestions of feminine daintiness he had so often
remarked about her, her slim, narrow feet, the little steel
buckles of her low shoes, the knot of black ribbon she had begun
to wear of late on the back of her head, and he heard her voice,
low-pitched, velvety, a sweet, murmuring huskiness that seemed to
come more from her chest than from her throat.
The buckskin's hoofs clattered upon the gravelly flats of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Persuasion by Jane Austen: but still she did it, and not with much happier effect;
though by what seemed prosperity in the shape of an early abdication
in her next neighbours, she found herself at the very end of the bench
before the concert closed.
Such was her situation, with a vacant space at hand, when Captain Wentworth
was again in sight. She saw him not far off. He saw her too;
yet he looked grave, and seemed irresolute, and only by very slow degrees
came at last near enough to speak to her. She felt that something
must be the matter. The change was indubitable. The difference
between his present air and what it had been in the Octagon Room
was strikingly great. Why was it? She thought of her father,
Persuasion |
