| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Professor by Charlotte Bronte: the seam gave way, glimpses of gilding appeared through the
widening interstices. Boards and baize being at length removed,
I lifted from the case a large picture, in a magnificent frame;
leaning it against a chair, in a position where the light from
the window fell favourably upon it, I stepped back--already I had
mounted my spectacles. A portrait-painter's sky (the most sombre
and threatening of welkins), and distant trees of a conventional
depth of hue, raised in full relief a pale, pensive-looking
female face, shadowed with soft dark hair, almost blending with
the equally dark clouds; large, solemn eyes looked reflectively
into mine; a thin cheek rested on a delicate little hand; a
The Professor |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare: KING.
We thank you, maiden:
But may not be so credulous of cure,--
When our most learned doctors leave us, and
The congregated college have concluded
That labouring art can never ransom nature
From her inaidable estate,--I say we must not
So stain our judgment, or corrupt our hope,
To prostitute our past-cure malady
To empirics; or to dissever so
Our great self and our credit, to esteem
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: so great and pure."
"You need not make yourself unhappy on that point--your poor return for his
love, my dear," said Lyndall. "A man's love is a fire of olive-wood. It
leaps higher every moment; it roars, it blazes, it shoots out red flames;
it threatens to wrap you round and devour you--you who stand by like an
icicle in the glow of its fierce warmth. You are self-reproached at your
own chilliness and want of reciprocity. The next day, when you go to warm
your hands a little, you find a few ashes! 'Tis a long love and cool
against a short love and hot; men, at all events, have nothing to complain
of."
"You speak so because you do not know men," said Em, instantly assuming the
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