| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh--but smile no more.
I well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad,
led us into a train of thought wherein there became manifest an
opinion of Usher's which I mention not so much on account of its
novelty (for other men* have thought thus,) as on account of the
pertinacity with which he maintained it. This opinion, in its
general form, was that of the sentience of all vegetable things.
But, in his disordered fancy, the idea had assumed a more daring
character, and trespassed, under certain conditions, upon the
kingdom of inorganization. I lack words to express the full
The Fall of the House of Usher |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Coxon Fund by Henry James: we liked her. In reality her personal fall had been a sort of
social rise--since I had seen the moment when, in our little
conscientious circle, her desolation almost made her the fashion.
Her voice was grating and her children ugly; moreover she hated the
good Mulvilles, whom I more and more loved. They were the people
who by doing most for her husband had in the long run done most for
herself; and the warm confidence with which he had laid his length
upon them was a pressure gentle compared with her stiffer
persuadability. I'm bound to say he didn't criticise his
benefactors, though practically he got tired of them; she, however,
had the highest standards about eleemosynary forms. She offered
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Battle of the Books by Jonathan Swift: pursued. But Wotton, heavy-armed, and slow of foot, began to slack
his course, when his lover Bentley appeared, returning laden with
the spoils of the two sleeping Ancients. Boyle observed him well,
and soon discovering the helmet and shield of Phalaris his friend,
both which he had lately with his own hands new polished and gilt,
rage sparkled in his eyes, and, leaving his pursuit after Wotton,
he furiously rushed on against this new approacher. Fain would he
be revenged on both; but both now fled different ways: and, as a
woman in a little house that gets a painful livelihood by spinning,
if chance her geese be scattered o'er the common, she courses round
the plain from side to side, compelling here and there the
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