| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: the most bogeyish part of the story is about such houses.
Two generations back they still stood dark and empty;
people avoided them as they passed by; the boldest
schoolboy only shouted through the keyhole and made off;
for within, it was supposed, the plague lay ambushed like
a basilisk, ready to flow forth and spread blain and
pustule through the city. What a terrible next-door
neighbour for superstitious citizens! A rat scampering
within would send a shudder through the stoutest heart.
Here, if you like, was a sanitary parable, addressed by
our uncleanly forefathers to their own neglect.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: francs a year, besides whatever she may give her when she marries.
I have prepared the way.
"Our friends will wonder to see a family of old nobility allying
itself to the Bontems; old Bontems was a red republican of the
deepest dye, owning large quantities of the nationalized land,
that he bought for a mere song. But he held nothing but convent
lands, and the monks will not come back; and then, as you have
already so far derogated as to become a lawyer, I cannot see why
we should shrink from a further concession to the prevalent ideas.
The girl will have three hundred thousand francs; I can give you a
hundred thousand; your mother's property must be worth fifty
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Thuvia, Maid of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: reach her father's court again.
When at last Carthoris found her, only to be struck
down by the long-sword of a green man, Thuvia prayed
that the same fate might overtake her.
The sight of the red warriors leaping from their fliers had,
for a moment, filled her with renewed hope--hope that Carthoris
of Helium might be only stunned and that they would rescue him;
but when she saw the Dusarian metal upon their harness,
and that they sought only to escape with her alone from
the charging Torquasians, she gave up.
Komal, too, was dead--dead across the body of the Heliumite.
Thuvia, Maid of Mars |
