| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain: such a to-do over her affairs, it would be absolutely necessary
to account to the reader for her. I thought and thought and
studied and studied; but I arrived at nothing. I finally saw
plainly that there was really no way but one--I must simply give
her the grand bounce. It grieved me to do it, for after
associating with her so much I had come to kind of like her after
a fashion, notwithstanding things and was so nauseatingly sentimental.
Still it had to be done. So at the top of Chapter
XVII I put a "Calendar" remark concerning July the Fourth,
and began the chapter with this statistic:
"Rowena went out in the backyard after supper to see the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes: favour as strongly as we could; and if the Moors had found the
papers they would have burned him alive.
I knew that he understood Arabic very well, and could not only speak
but also write it; but before I disclosed the whole matter to him, I
asked him to read for me this paper which I had found by accident in a
hole in my cell. He opened it and remained some time examining it
and muttering to himself as he translated it. I asked him if he
understood it, and he told me he did perfectly well, and that if I
wished him to tell me its meaning word for word, I must give him pen
and ink that he might do it more satisfactorily. We at once gave him
what he required, and he set about translating it bit by bit, and when
Don Quixote |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Several Works by Edgar Allan Poe: unutterable horror at finding the grave cerements and corpse-like
mask, which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by
any tangible form.
And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He
had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the
revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each
in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony
clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of
the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held
illimitable dominion over all.
The Cask of Amontillado
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