| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: companion of thy guilt.---And now, parricide, farewell
for ever!---May each stone of this vaulted roof
find a tongue to echo that title into thine ear!''
So saying, she left the apartment; and Front-de-Buf
could hear the crash of the ponderous key,
as she locked and double-locked the door behind
her, thus cutting off the most slender chance of
escape. In the extremity of agony he shouted upon
his servants and allies--``Stephen and Saint Maur!
---Clement and Giles!---I burn here unaided!---
To the rescue---to the rescue, brave Bois-Guilbert,
Ivanhoe |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: stranger forgot all else for an instant.
"To-morrow," he said, sadly; "but to-morrow, Labedoyere--"
Ginevra turned, put a finger on her lips, and looked at him, as if to
say: "Be calm, be prudent."
And the young man cried out in his own language:
"Ah! Dio! che non vorrei vivere dopo averla veduta?--who would not
wish to live after seeing her?"
The peculiar accent with which he pronounced the words made Ginevra
quiver.
"Are you Corsican?" she cried, returning toward him with a beating
heart.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Extracts From Adam's Diary by Mark Twain: one of them for my collection, but she is prejudiced against it
for some reason or other; so I have relinquished the idea, though
I think it is a mistake. It would be an irreparable loss to science
if they should get away. The old one is tamer than it was, and
can laugh and talk like the parrot, having learned this, no doubt,
from being with the parrot so much, and having the imitative faculty
in a highly developed degree. I shall be astonished if it turns
out to be a new kind of parrot, and yet I ought not to be astonished,
for it has already been everything else it could think of, since
those first days when it was a fish. The new one is as ugly now
as the old one was at first; has the same sulphur-and-raw-meat
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