| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: so that even now, as she bravely blinked under the signal
of my word, I could keep her comparatively firm. "A talk!
Do you mean she spoke?"
"It came to that. I found her, on my return, in the schoolroom."
"And what did she say?" I can hear the good woman still,
and the candor of her stupefaction.
"That she suffers the torments--!"
It was this, of a truth, that made her, as she filled out my picture, gape.
"Do you mean," she faltered, "--of the lost?"
"Of the lost. Of the damned. And that's why, to share them-"
I faltered myself with the horror of it.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: Accordingly, when the feast was over I said that I desired to walk
in the gardens with the princess Otomie, and we went out and
wandered under the solemn trees, that are draped in a winding-sheet
of grey moss which, hanging from every bough as though the forest
had been decked with the white beards of an army of aged men, waved
and rustled sadly in the keen night air. But alas! we might not be
alone, for after us at a distance of twenty paces followed all my
crowd of attendant nobles, together with fair dancing girls and
minstrels armed with their accursed flutes, on which they blew in
season and out of it, dancing as they blew. In vain did I command
them to be silent, telling them that it was written of old that
Montezuma's Daughter |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sylvie and Bruno by Lewis Carroll: Give me a year to speculate--
To buy and sell--to drive a trade--'
Said Paul 'I cannot change the date.
On May the Fourth it must be paid.'
'Well, well!' said Peter, with a sigh.
'Hand me the cash, and I will go.
I'll form a Joint-Stock Company,
And turn an honest pound or so.'
'I'm grieved,' said Paul, 'to seem unkind:
The money shalt of course be lent:
But, for a week or two, I find
Sylvie and Bruno |
