| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: which I suppose I ought to learn at this season. JUDE
He despatched the note on Easter Eve, and there seemed a finality in
their decisions. But other forces and laws than theirs were in operation.
On Easter Monday morning he received a message from the Widow Edlin,
whom he had directed to telegraph if anything serious happened:
Your aunt is sinking. Come at once.
He threw down his tools and went. Three and a half hours later
he was crossing the downs about Marygreen, and presently plunged into
the concave field across which the short cut was made to the village.
As he ascended on the other side a labouring man, who had been watching
his approach from a gate across the path, moved uneasily, and prepared
Jude the Obscure |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: keened beside the death-bed; to think that we cannot now accept
these strong emotions unless they be uttered in the just note of
life; nor (save in the pulpit) endure these gross conventions.
They wound us, I am tempted to say, like mockery; the high voice of
keening (as it yet lingers on) strikes in the face of sorrow like a
buffet; and the rant and cant of the staled beggar stirs in us a
shudder of disgust. But the fact disproves these amateur opinions.
The beggar lives by his knowledge of the average man. He knows
what he is about when he bandages his head, and hires and drugs a
babe, and poisons life with POOR MARY ANN or LONG, LONG AGO; he
knows what he is about when he loads the critical ear and sickens
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Dracula by Bram Stoker: comparatively new. But I went down the stone stairs to the hall
where I had entered originally. I found I could pull back the bolts
easily enough and unhook the great chains. But the door was locked,
and the key was gone! That key must be in the Count's room.
I must watch should his door be unlocked, so that I may get it and escape.
I went on to make a thorough examination of the various stairs
and passages, and to try the doors that opened from them.
One or two small rooms near the hall were open, but there was nothing
to see in them except old furniture, dusty with age and moth-eaten.
At last, however, I found one door at the top of the stairway which,
though it seemed locked, gave a little under pressure.
Dracula |
