| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott: immediately summoned. All night she remained delirious. On the
morning, she fell into a state of absolute insensibility. The
next evening, the physicians said, would be the crisis of her
malady. It proved so; for although she awoke from her trance
with some appearance of calmness, and suffered her night-
clothes to be changed, or put in order, yet so soon as she put
her hand to her neck, as if to search for the for the fatal flue
ribbon, a tide of recollections seemed to rush upon her, which
her mind and body were alike incapable of bearing. Convulsion
followed convulsion, till they closed in death, without her being
able to utter a word explanatory of the fatal scene.
The Bride of Lammermoor |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: has to carry all the crockery one has finished using: it was the
last time Thursdale ever allowed himself to be encumbered with
the debris of a feast. He thus incidentally learned that the
privilege of loving her is one of the least favors that a
charming woman can accord; and in seeking to avoid the pitfalls
of sentiment he had developed a science of evasion in which the
woman of the moment became a mere implement of the game. He owed
a great deal of delicate enjoyment to the cultivation of this
art. The perils from which it had been his refuge became naively
harmless: was it possible that he who now took his easy way along
the levels had once preferred to gasp on the raw heights of
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: restarted in business with a capital of half a million roubles. 'But
no,' he said. 'A steward am I, and a steward will I remain to the end;
for, from being full-stomached and heavy with dropsy, I have become
strong and well.' Not a drop of liquor passes his lips, but only
cabbage soup and gruel. And he prays as none of the rest of us pray,
and he helps the poor as none of the rest of us help them; and to this
he would add yet further charity if his means permitted him to do so."
Poor Khlobuev remained silent, as before.
The elder man took his two hands in his.
"Semen Semenovitch," he said, "you cannot think how much I pity you,
or how much I have had you in my thoughts. Listen to me. In the
Dead Souls |
