| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Herbert West: Reanimator by H. P. Lovecraft: was slow and sordid -- it might have been gruesomely poetical
if we had been artists instead of scientists -- and we were glad
when our spades struck wood. When the pine box was fully uncovered,
West scrambled down and removed the lid, dragging out and propping
up the contents. I reached down and hauled the contents out of
the grave, and then both toiled hard to restore the spot to its
former appearance. The affair made us rather nervous, especially
the stiff form and vacant face of our first trophy, but we managed
to remove all traces of our visit. When we had patted down the
last shovelful of earth, we put the specimen in a canvas sack
and set out for the old Chapman place beyond Meadow Hill.
Herbert West: Reanimator |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: For mankind is ruled and guided, in the long run, not by practical
considerations, not by self-interest, not by compromises; but by
theories and principles, and those of the most abstruse, delicate,
supernatural, and literally unspeakable kind; which, whether they be
according to reason or not, are so little according to logic--that
is, to speakable reason--that they cannot be put into speech. Men
act, whether singly or in masses, by impulses and instincts for
which they give reasons quite incompetent, often quite irrelevant;
but which they have caught from each other, as they catch fever or
small-pox; as unconsciously, and yet as practically and potently;
just as the nineteenth century has caught from the philosophers of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Chronicles of the Canongate by Walter Scott: I must reject them, to the injury of the feelings of the writer,
or else insert them, to make my own darkness yet more opaque and
palpable. "Let every herring," says our old-fashioned proverb,
"hang by his own head."
One person, however, I may distinguish, as she is now no more,
who, living to the utmost term of human life, honoured me with a
great share of her friendship--as, indeed, we were blood-
relatives in the Scottish sense--Heaven knows how many degrees
removed--and friends in the sense of Old England. I mean the
late excellent and regretted Mrs. Bethune Baliol. But as I
design this admirable picture of the olden time for a principal
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