| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas: the sight of greatness hurled down into the dust.
"Has not," they would say, "this Cornelius de Witt been
locked up and broken by the rack? Shall we not see him pale,
streaming with blood, covered with shame?" And was not this
a sweet triumph for the burghers of the Hague, whose envy
even beat that of the common rabble; a triumph in which
every honest citizen and townsman might be expected to
share?
"Moreover," hinted the Orange agitators interspersed through
the crowd, whom they hoped to manage like a sharp-edged and
at the same time crushing instrument, -- "moreover, will
The Black Tulip |
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: hasn't its signalement been handed down in the family? How has
it managed to preserve its incognito?"
Alida could only shake her head. "Don't ask me. But it has."
"And then suddenly--" Mary spoke up as if from some cavernous
depth of divination--"suddenly, long afterward, one says to one's
self, 'THAT WAS it?'"
She was oddly startled at the sepulchral sound with which her
question fell on the banter of the other two, and she saw the
shadow of the same surprise flit across Alida's clear pupils.
"I suppose so. One just has to wait."
"Oh, hang waiting!" Ned broke in. "Life's too short for a ghost
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: for humour on the road to death, and so I laughed with her.
"Do you know where we are going?" she said.
"To solve the mystery of the eternal hereafter, I imagine," I replied.
"I am going to a worse fate than that," she said, with a little shudder.
"What do you mean?"
"I can only guess," she replied, "since no thern damsel of
all the millions that have been stolen away by black pirates
during the ages they have raided our domains has ever returned
to narrate her experiences among them. That they never take a
man prisoner lends strength to the belief that the fate of the
girls they steal is worse than death."
The Gods of Mars |
