| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: I could examine it for hours, but I have only a few minutes, unfortunately;
for I am in the middle of a job out here."
"Your cousin is so terribly clever that she criticizes it unmercifully,"
said Phillotson, with good-humoured satire. "She is quite sceptical
as to its correctness."
"No, Mr. Phillotson, I am not--altogether! I hate to be what is
called a clever girl--there are too many of that sort now!"
answered Sue sensitively. "I only meant--I don't know what I meant--
except that it was what you don't understand!"
"I know your meaning," said Jude ardently (although he did not).
"And I think you are quite right."
Jude the Obscure |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Dreams by Olive Schreiner: of my kind is never heard, and laboured alone, to lie down and be food for
you, ye harpies?"
He laughed fiercely; and the Echoes of Despair slunk away, for the laugh of
a brave, strong heart is as a death blow to them.
Nevertheless they crept out again and looked at him.
"Do you know that your hair is white?" they said, "that your hands begin to
tremble like a child's? Do you see that the point of your shuttle is
gone?--it is cracked already. If you should ever climb this stair," they
said, "it will be your last. You will never climb another."
And he answered, "I know it!" and worked on.
The old, thin hands cut the stones ill and jaggedly, for the fingers were
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Complete Angler by Izaak Walton: of frogs are, and yet live without being harmed by them; for, as some
say, he has in him a natural balsam, or antidote against all poison. And
he has a strange heat, that though it appear to us to be cold, can yet
digest or put over any fish-flesh, by degrees, without being sick. And
others observe, that he never eats the venomous frog till he have first
killed her, and then as ducks are observed to do to frogs in spawning-
time, at which time some frogs are observed to be venomous, so
thoroughly washed her, by tumbling her up and down in the water, that
he may devour her without danger. And Gesner affirms, that a Polonian
gentleman did faithfully assure him, he had seen two young geese at
one time in the belly of a Pike. And doubtless a Pike in his height of
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