| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy: as the Alastor of those households whose crime it was to be
poor.
After midsummer they watched the weather-cocks as men
waiting in antechambers watch the lackey. Sun elated them;
quiet rain sobered them; weeks of watery tempest stupefied
them. That aspect of the sky which they now regard as
disagreeable they then beheld as maleficent.
It was June, and the weather was very unfavourable.
Casterbridge, being as it were the bell-board on which all
the adjacent hamlets and villages sounded their notes, was
decidedly dull. Instead of new articles in the shop-windows
The Mayor of Casterbridge |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: entirely red, this inn produced a most piquant effect in the
landscape, whether by detaching itself from the general background of
the town, or by contrasting its scarlet sides with the verdure of the
surrounding foliage, and the gray-blue tints of the water. This house
owed its name, the Red Inn, to this external decoration, imposed upon
it, no doubt from time immemorial by the caprice of its founder. A
mercantile superstition, natural enough to the different possessors of
the building, far-famed among the sailors of the Rhine, had made them
scrupulous to preserve the title.
Hearing the sound of horses' hoofs, the master of the Red Inn came out
upon the threshold of his door.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Poems by Bronte Sisters: And love shall tame that haughty soul--
Yes--tenderest love for me.
I'll read my triumph in thine eyes,
Behold, and prove the change;
Then leave, perchance, my noble prize,
Once more in arms to range.
I'd die when all the foam is up,
The bright wine sparkling high;
Nor wait till in the exhausted cup
Life's dull dregs only lie.
Then Love thus crowned with sweet reward,
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