| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Marie by H. Rider Haggard: passed me, Vrouw Prinsloo wished me good luck in a cheerful voice,
although I could see that her poor old hand was shaking, and she was
wiping her eyes with the vatdoek. Henri Marais, also in broken tones,
implored me to shoot straight for his daughter's sake. Then came Marie,
pale but resolute, who said nothing, but only looked me in the eyes, and
touched the pocket of her dress, in which I knew the pistol lay hid. Of
the rest of them I took no notice.
The moment, that dreadful moment of trial, had come at last; and oh! the
suspense and the waiting were hard to bear. It seemed an age before the
first speck, that I knew to be a vulture, appeared thousands of feet
above me and began to descend in wide circles.
Marie |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: the spectacle before him. On each side of the door was a face framed
in a species of loophole. At first he took these two faces for
grotesque masks carved in stone, so angular, distorted, projecting,
motionless, discolored were they; but the cold air and the moonlight
presently enabled him to distinguish the faint white mist which living
breath sent from two purplish noses; then he saw in each hollow face,
beneath the shadow of the eyebrows, two eyes of porcelain blue casting
clear fire, like those of a wolf crouching in the brushwood as it
hears the baying of the hounds. The uneasy gleam of those eyes was
turned on him so fixedly that, after receiving it for fully a minute,
during which he examined the singular sight, he felt like a bird at
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Bronte Sisters: fearful agony in the garden.
As for me, I was hungry, and contented myself with silently
demolishing the tea, ham, and toast, while my mother and sister
went on talking, and continued to discuss the apparent or non-
apparent circumstances, and probable or improbable history of the
mysterious lady; but I must confess that, after my brother's
misadventure, I once or twice raised the cup to my lips, and put it
down again without daring to taste the contents, lest I should
injure my dignity by a similar explosion.
The next day my mother and Rose hastened to pay their compliments
to the fair recluse; and came back but little wiser than they went;
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall |
