| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer: to convey the sense of the uncanny which the episode created.
Yet, even as I think of it, I feel again, though in lesser degree,
the chill which seemed to creep through my veins that day.
From my brief history of the wonderful and evil man who once walked,
by the way unsuspected, in the midst of the people of England--
near whom you, personally, may at some time unwittingly, have been--
I am aware that much must be omitted. I have no space for lengthy
examinations of the many points but ill illuminated with which it is dotted.
This incident at the docks is but one such point.
Another is the singular vision which appeared to me whilst I lay in
the cellar of the house near Windsor. It has since struck me that it
The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: sufficient testimony to the elegances of Art which peopled these
apartments with animated designs in which salamanders sparkled among
the wreaths, and the palette of the sixteenth century illumined the
darkest corners with its brilliant coloring. In this cabinet an
observer will still find traces of that taste for gilding which
Catherine brought with her from Italy; for the princesses of her house
loved, in the words of the author already quoted, to veneer the
castles of France with the gold earned by their ancestors in commerce,
and to hang out their wealth on the walls of their apartments.
The queen-mother occupied on the first upper floor of the apartments
of Queen Claude of France, wife of Francois I., in which may still be
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling: four years old, and the girl had long since given up thinking of it.
She had married and had many cares of her own. In the beginning,
she had told Hannasyde that, "while she could never be anything more
than a sister to him, she would always take the deepest interest in
his welfare." This startlingly new and original remark gave
Hannasyde something to think over for two years; and his own vanity
filled in the other twenty-four months. Hannasyde was quite
different from Phil Garron, but, none the less, had several points
in common with that far too lucky man.
He kept his unrequited attachment by him as men keep a well-smoked
pipe--for comfort's sake, and because it had grown dear in the
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