| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Pierrette by Honore de Balzac: being marked by a total want of harmony--was that of hardness in the
lines, sharpness in the tones; while an unfeeling spirit, pervading
all, would have filled a physiognomist with disgust. These
characteristics, fully visible at this moment, were usually modified
in public by a sort of commercial smile,--a bourgeois smirk which
mimicked good-humor; so that persons meeting with this old maid might
very well take her for a kindly woman. She owned the house on shares
with her brother. The brother, by-the-bye, was sleeping so tranquilly
in his own chamber that the orchestra of the Opera-house could not
have awakened him, wonderful as its diapason is said to be.
The old maid stretched her neck out of the window, twisted it, and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft: in marble those nightmares and phantasies which Arthur Machen
evokes in prose, and Clark Ashton Smith makes visible in verse
and in painting.
Dark, frail, and somewhat unkempt in aspect,
he turned languidly at my knock and asked me my business without
rising. Then I told him who I was, he displayed some interest;
for my uncle had excited his curiosity in probing his strange
dreams, yet had never explained the reason for the study. I did
not enlarge his knowledge in this regard, but sought with some
subtlety to draw him out. In a short time I became convinced ofhis
absolute sincerity, for he spoke of the dreams in a manner none
Call of Cthulhu |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from McTeague by Frank Norris: Street had been filled with a number of grand ladies of the
Kindergarten Board, who were hanging up ropes of evergreen
and sprays of holly, and arranging a great Christmas tree
that stood in the centre of the ring in the schoolroom. The
whole place was pervaded with a pungent, piney odor. Trina
had been very busy since the early morning, coming and going
at everybody's call, now running down the street after
another tack-hammer or a fresh supply of cranberries, now
tying together the ropes of evergreen and passing them up to
one of the grand ladies as she carefully balanced herself on
a step-ladder. By evening everything was in place. As the
McTeague |
