| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: however wonderful, forces conviction. The story is too connected
to be mistaken for a dream, and I have no motive for falsehood."
My manner as I thus addressed him was impressive but calm;
I had formed in my own heart a resolution to pursue my destroyer to death,
and this purpose quieted my agony and for an interval reconciled me to life.
I now related my history briefly but with firmness and precision,
marking the dates with accuracy and never deviating into invective
or exclamation.
The magistrate appeared at first perfectly incredulous, but as I
continued he became more attentive and interested; I saw him
sometimes shudder with horror; at others a lively surprise,
 Frankenstein |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Falk by Joseph Conrad: They, in their turn, notified Falk that so-and-so
was ready to go out. Then Falk (ostensibly when it
fitted in with his other work, but, if the truth were
known, simply when his arbitrary spirit moved
him), after ascertaining carefully in the office that
there was enough money to meet his bill, would
come along unsympathetically, glaring at you with
his yellow eyes from the bridge, and would drag you
out dishevelled as to rigging, lumbered as to the
decks, with unfeeling haste, as if to execution. And
he would force you too to take the end of his own
 Falk |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Roads of Destiny by O. Henry: served."
Louis approached the disreputable guest with the suavity due to a
visitor to Charleroi, and spirited him away to inner regions.
Promptly, in twenty minutes, Absalom announced dinner, and, a moment
later, the guest was ushered into the dining hall where Grandemont
waited, standing, at the head of the table. The attentions of Louis
had transformed the stranger into something resembling the polite
animal. Clean linen and an old evening suit that had been sent down
from town to clothe a waiter had worked a miracle with his exterior.
Brush and comb had partially subdued the wild disorder of his hair.
Now he might have passed for no more extravagant a thing than one of
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