| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lair of the White Worm by Bram Stoker: sense of fine feeling in the matter. In emotional, as in other
matters, Oolanga was distinctly a utilitarian, and as he could not
understand anyone feeling grief except for his own suffering, pain,
or for the loss of money, he could not understand anyone simulating
such an emotion except for show intended to deceive. He thought
that she had come to Castra Regis again for the opportunity of
stealing something, and was determined that on this occasion the
chance of pressing his advantage over her should not pass. He felt,
therefore, that the occasion was one for extra carefulness in the
watching of all that went on. Ever since he had come to the
conclusion that Lady Arabella was trying to steal the treasure-
Lair of the White Worm |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was
unrelieved by any of that half-pleasureable, because poetic,
sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest
natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the
scene before me--upon the mere house, and the simple landscape
features of the domain--upon the bleak walls--upon the vacant
eye-like windows--upon a few rank sedges--and upon a few white
trunks of decayed trees--with an utter depression of soul which I
can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the
after-dream of the reveller upon opium--the bitter lapse into
everyday life--the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was
The Fall of the House of Usher |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Professor by Charlotte Bronte: "Precisely so."
I saw him give a quick, covert glance all round my room; he
marked its narrow limits, its scanty furniture: in an instant he
had comprehended the state of matters--had absolved me from the
crime of prosperity. A curious effect this discovery wrought in
his strange mind; I am morally certain that if he had found me
installed in a handsome parlour, lounging on a soft couch, with a
pretty, wealthy wife at my side, he would have hated me; a brief,
cold, haughty visit, would in such a case have been the extreme
limit of his civilities, and never would he have come near me
more, so long as the tide of fortune bore me smoothly on its
The Professor |
