| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas: results. I am at present in the midst of war, and am about
to deliver a decisive battle against King Charles. I shall
gain it, for the hope of the nation and the Spirit of the
Lord are with me. This battle won by me, the king will have
no further resources in England or in Scotland; and if he is
not captured or killed, he will endeavor to pass over into
France to recruit soldiers and to refurnish himself with
arms and money. France has already received Queen Henrietta,
and, unintentionally, doubtless, has maintained a centre of
inextinguishable civil war in my country. But Madame
Henrietta is a daughter of France and was entitled to the
Twenty Years After |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: would hardly have insured her self-possession; for she thought it
probable, even if she DID, in some miraculous way, remember an
Allusion, it would be only to find that Osric Dane used a
different volume (Mrs. Leveret was convinced that literary people
always carried them), and would consequently not recognise her
quotations.
Mrs. Leveret's sense of being adrift was intensified by the
appearance of Mrs. Ballinger's drawing-room. To a careless eye
its aspect was unchanged; but those acquainted with Mrs.
Ballinger's way of arranging her books would instantly have
detected the marks of recent perturbation. Mrs. Ballinger's
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: is little in its uncouth and unimaginative prolixity which could
have had interest for the lofty and spiritual ideality of my
friend. It was, however, the only book immediately at hand; and
I indulged a vague hope that the excitement which now agitated
the hypochondriac, might find relief (for the history of mental
disorder is full of similar anomalies) even in the extremeness of
the folly which I should read. Could I have judged, indeed, by
the wild overstrained air of vivacity with which he
hearkened, or apparently hearkened, to the words of the tale, I
might well have congratulated myself upon the success of my
design.
The Fall of the House of Usher |
