The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce: One lodged between his collar and neck; it was uncomfortably
warm and he snatched it out.
As he rose to the surface, gasping for breath, he saw that he
had been a long time under water; he was perceptibly farther
downstream -- nearer to safety. The soldiers had almost
finished reloading; the metal ramrods flashed all at once in
the sunshine as they were drawn from the barrels,
turned in the air, and thrust into their sockets. The two
sentinels fired again, independently and ineffectually.
The hunted man saw all this over his shoulder; he was now
swimming vigorously with the current. His brain was as
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Faith of Men by Jack London: dreary Twenty Mile and the man alone in the silence with his
thoughts.
And here might well end the story of Jees Uck but for the crown she
put upon her renunciation. When she returned to the North to dwell
in her grand log-house, John Thompson found that the P. C. Company
could make a shift somehow to carry on its business without his
aid. Also, the new agent and the succeeding agents received
instructions that the woman Jees Uck should be given whatsoever
goods and grub she desired, in whatsoever quantities she ordered,
and that no charge should be placed upon the books. Further, the
Company paid yearly to the woman Jees Uck a pension of five
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Book of Remarkable Criminals by H. B. Irving: Governor ordered him to go on with his walk.
It was as John Ward, alias Charles Peace, that Peace, on November
19, 1878, was put on his trial for burglary and the attempted
murder of Police Constable Robinson, at the Old Bailey before Mr.
Justice Hawkins. His age was given in the calendar as sixty,
though Peace was actually forty-six. The evidence against the
prisoner was clear enough. All Mr. Montagu Williams could urge
in his defence was that Peace had never intended to kill the
officer, merely to frighten him. The jury found Peace guilty of
attempted murder. Asked if he had anything to say why judgment
should not be passed upon him, he addressed the Judge. He
A Book of Remarkable Criminals |