| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: the sheets which were lying upon the table, and began turning them
over this way and that, and muttering to herself as she glanced:
"A plus B minus C equals 'x y z'. It's so dreadfully ugly, Katharine.
That's what I feel--so dreadfully ugly."
Katharine took the sheets from her mother's hand and began shuffling
them absent-mindedly together, for her fixed gaze seemed to show that
her thoughts were intent upon some other matter.
"Well, I don't know about ugliness," she said at length.
"But he doesn't ask it of you?" Mrs. Hilbery exclaimed. "Not that
grave young man with the steady brown eyes?"
"He doesn't ask anything--we neither of us ask anything."
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Dracula by Bram Stoker: Suddenly, away on our left I saw a fain flickering
blue flame. The driver saw it at the same moment.
He at once checked the horses, and, jumping to the ground,
disappeared into the darkness. I did not know what to do,
the less as the howling of the wolves grew closer.
But while I wondered, the driver suddenly appeared again,
and without a word took his seat, and we resumed our journey.
I think I must have fallen asleep and kept dreaming
of the incident, for it seemed to be repeated endlessly,
and now looking back, it is like a sort of awful nightmare.
Once the flame appeared so near the road, that even in
Dracula |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: itself.
The one was, to have the town built exactly in the style of those of which
it was most likely to be the representative:--with grated windows, and the
gable ends of the houses, facing the streets, &c. &c.--as those in Ghent
and Bruges, and the rest of the towns in Brabant and Flanders.
The other was, not to have the houses run up together, as the corporal
proposed, but to have every house independent, to hook on, or off, so as to
form into the plan of whatever town they pleased. This was put directly
into hand, and many and many a look of mutual congratulation was exchanged
between my uncle Toby and the corporal, as the carpenter did the work.
--It answered prodigiously the next summer--the town was a perfect Proteus-
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