| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Lobo: retreated to a wood, where they were soon discovered by a detachment
sent in search of them, and brought to Mahomet, who was overjoyed to
see his most formidable enemy in his power, and ordered him to take
care of his uncle and nephew, who were wounded, telling him he
should answer for their lives; and, upon their death, taxed him with
hastening it. The brave Portuguese made no excuses, but told him he
came thither to destroy Mahometans, and not to save them. Mahomet,
enraged at this language, ordered a stone to be put on his head, and
exposed this great man to the insults and reproaches of the whole
army. After this they inflicted various kinds of tortures on him,
which he endured with incredible resolution, and without uttering
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Lobo: and flaying us alive; the terror of these threatenings was much
increased by his domestics, who told us of many of his cruelties.
This is certain, that some time before, he had used some poor pagan
merchants in that manner, and had caused the executioner to begin to
flay them, when some Brahmin, touched with compassion, generously
contributed the sum demanded for their ransom. We had no reason to
hope for so much kindness, and, having nothing of our own, could
promise no certain sum.
At length some of his favourites whom he most confided in, knowing
his cruelty and our inability to pay what he demanded, and
apprehending that, if he should put us to the death he threatened,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: exact similarity of character, the echo (but a stifled and dull
one certainly) of the very cracking and ripping sound which Sir
Launcelot had so particularly described. It was, beyond doubt,
the coincidence alone which had arrested my attention; for, amid
the rattling of the sashes of the casements, and the ordinary
commingled noises of the still increasing storm, the sound, in
itself, had nothing, surely, which should have interested or
disturbed me. I continued the story:
"But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the
door, was sore enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the
maliceful hermit; but, in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly
The Fall of the House of Usher |
