| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: --Now what can their two noddles be about? cried my father to my mother--by
all that's strange, they are besieging Mrs. Wadman in form, and are
marching round her house to mark out the lines of circumvallation.
I dare say, quoth my mother--But stop, dear Sir--for what my mother dared
to say upon the occasion--and what my father did say upon it--with her
replies and his rejoinders, shall be read, perused, paraphrased, commented,
and descanted upon--or to say it all in a word, shall be thumb'd over by
Posterity in a chapter apart--I say, by Posterity--and care not, if I
repeat the word again--for what has this book done more than the Legation
of Moses, or the Tale of a Tub, that it may not swim down the gutter of
Time along with them?
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells: Two other figures lay near the fire,--the one motionless, the other
groaning fitfully, every now and then raising its head slowly,
then dropping it again.
I caught hold of the grey man and pulled him off Montgomery's body;
his claws drew down the torn coat reluctantly as I dragged him away.
Montgomery was dark in the face and scarcely breathing. I splashed
sea-water on his face and pillowed his head on my rolled-up coat.
M'ling was dead. The wounded creature by the fire--it was a Wolf-brute
with a bearded grey face--lay, I found, with the fore part of its
body upon the still glowing timber. The wretched thing was injured
so dreadfully that in mercy I blew its brains out at once.
The Island of Doctor Moreau |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock: contributed to supply, at the same time with an excellent cook,
whom Little John's art had spirited away to the forest with the contents
of his master's silver scullery.
An hundred foresters were here assembled over-ready for their dinner,
some seated at the table and some lying in groups under the trees.
Robin bade courteous welcome to the knight, who took his seat between
Robin and Marian at the festal board; at which was already placed
one strange guest in the person of a portly monk, sitting between
Little John and Scarlet, with, his rotund physiognomy elongated
into an unnatural oval by the conjoint influence of sorrow and fear:
sorrow for the departed contents of his travelling treasury, a good-looking
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