| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Professor by Charlotte Bronte: shallow; a porter had doubtless shoved it forward, but seeing no
occupant of the room, had left it at the entrance.
"That is none of mine," thought I, approaching; "it must be meant
for somebody else." I stooped to examine the address:--
"Wm. Crimsworth, Esq., No --, -- St., Brussels."
I was puzzled, but concluding that the best way to obtain
information was to ask within, I cut the cords and opened the
case. Green baize enveloped its contents, sewn carefully at the
sides; I ripped the pack-thread with my pen-knife, and still, as
the seam gave way, glimpses of gilding appeared through the
widening interstices. Boards and baize being at length removed,
The Professor |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Silas Marner by George Eliot: looked up at him. On the table near them, lit by a candle, lay the
recovered gold--the old long-loved gold, ranged in orderly heaps,
as Silas used to range it in the days when it was his only joy. He
had been telling her how he used to count it every night, and how
his soul was utterly desolate till she was sent to him.
"At first, I'd a sort o' feeling come across me now and then," he
was saying in a subdued tone, "as if you might be changed into the
gold again; for sometimes, turn my head which way I would, I seemed
to see the gold; and I thought I should be glad if I could feel it,
and find it was come back. But that didn't last long. After a bit,
I should have thought it was a curse come again, if it had drove you
Silas Marner |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott: hospitality had assembled around him. He more than once
expressed surprise at the General's absence, and at length sent a
servant to make inquiry after him. The man brought back
information that General Browne had been walking abroad since an
early hour of the morning, in defiance of the weather, which was
misty and ungenial.
"The custom of a soldier," said the young nobleman to his
friends. "Many of them acquire habitual vigilance, and cannot
sleep after the early hour at which their duty usually commands
them to be alert."
Yet the explanation which Lord Woodville thus offered to the
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