| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: it was simply, it was overwhelmingly too late? He had never at any
stage of his queer consciousness admitted the whisper of such a
correction; he had never till within these last few months been so
false to his conviction as not to hold that what was to come to him
had time, whether HE struck himself as having it or not. That at
last, at last, he certainly hadn't it, to speak of, or had it but
in the scantiest measure--such, soon enough, as things went with
him, became the inference with which his old obsession had to
reckon: and this it was not helped to do by the more and more
confirmed appearance that the great vagueness casting the long
shadow in which he had lived had, to attest itself, almost no
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: --the two sets of planks of course not yielding, being themselves
bound together by ropes. These wedges were driven in on a line with
the knees and the ankles. The choice of these places where there is
little flesh, and where, consequently, the wedge could only be forced
in by crushing the bones, made this form of torture, called the
"question," horribly painful. In the "ordinary question" four wedges
were driven in,--two at the knees, two at the ankles; but in the
"extraordinary question" the number was increased to eight, provided
the doctor certified that the prisoner's vitality was not exhausted.
At the time of which we write the "boots" were also applied in the
same manner to the hands and wrists; but, being pressed for time, the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn: whispering,-- and about the silent death of old Mosaku. And he said:--
"Asleep or awake, that was the only time that I saw a being as beautiful
as you. Of course, she was not a human being; and I was afraid of her,--
very much afraid,-- but she was so white!... Indeed, I have never been sure
whether it was a dream that I saw, or the Woman of theSnow."...
O-Yuki flung down her sewing, and arose, and bowed above Minokichi where
he sat, and shrieked into his face:--
"It was I -- I -- I! Yuki it was! And I told you then that I would kill
you if you ever said one work about it!... But for those children asleep
there, I would kill you this moment! And now you had better take very, very
good care of them; for if ever they have reason to complain of you, I will
Kwaidan |
