| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Silas Marner by George Eliot: a wish to be better than the "common run", that would have
implied a reflection on those who had had godfathers and godmothers
as well as themselves, and had an equal right to the
burying-service. At the same time, it was understood to be
requisite for all who were not household servants, or young men, to
take the sacrament at one of the great festivals: Squire Cass
himself took it on Christmas-day; while those who were held to be
"good livers" went to church with greater, though still with
moderate, frequency.
Mrs. Winthrop was one of these: she was in all respects a woman of
scrupulous conscience, so eager for duties that life seemed to offer
Silas Marner |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne: but I now resolved to be upon my guard. Indeed, I thought
that this halt would mark the termination of our walk;
but I was mistaken, for, instead of returning to the Nautilus,
Captain Nemo continued his bold excursion. The ground was still
on the incline, its declivity seemed to be getting greater,
and to be leading us to greater depths. It must have been
about three o'clock when we reached a narrow valley, between high
perpendicular walls, situated about seventy-five fathoms deep.
Thanks to the perfection of our apparatus, we were forty-five
fathoms below the limit which nature seems to have imposed on man
as to his submarine excursions.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: the spectral world not to know that one could not talk about the
ghosts one saw: to do so was almost as great a breach of good-
breeding as to name a lady in a club. But this explanation did
not really satisfy her. "What, after all, except for the fun of
the frisson," she reflected, "would he really care for any of
their old ghosts?" And thence she was thrown back once more on
the fundamental dilemma: the fact that one's greater or less
susceptibility to spectral influences had no particular bearing
on the case, since, when one DID see a ghost at Lyng, one did not
know it.
"Not till long afterward," Alida Stair had said. Well, supposing
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