| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: know they were both prepossessed and fully persuaded of it--and are so to
this hour, That there was nothing of accident in the whole event--but that
the chesnut's taking that particular course, and in a manner of its own
accord--and then falling with all its heat directly into that one
particular place, and no other--was a real judgment upon Phutatorius for
that filthy and obscene treatise de Concubinis retinendis, which
Phutatorius had published about twenty years ago--and was that identical
week going to give the world a second edition of.
It is not my business to dip my pen in this controversy--much undoubtedly
may be wrote on both sides of the question--all that concerns me as an
historian, is to represent the matter of fact, and render it credible to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: From some, the light was scarcely more than a gloom:
From some, a dazzling desire.
And there was one, beneath black eaves, who thought,
Combing with lifted arms her golden hair,
Of the lover who hurried towards her through the night;
And there was one who dreamed of a sudden death
As she blew out her light.
And there was one who turned from clamoring streets,
And walked in lamplit gardens among black trees,
And looked at the windy sky,
And thought with terror how stones and roots would freeze
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy: some months; the horrors and bloodshed of the Reign of Terror,
culminating in the September massacres, had only come across the
Channel to her as a faint echo. Robespierre, Danton, Marat, she had
not known in their new guise of bloody judiciaries, merciless wielders
of the guillotine. Her very soul recoiled in horror from these
excesses, to which she feared her brother Armand--moderate republican
as he was--might become one day the holocaust.
Then, when first she heard of this band of young English
enthusiasts, who, for sheer love of their fellowmen, dragged women and
children, old and young men, from a horrible death, her heart had
glowed with pride for them, and now, as Chauvelin spoke, her very soul
The Scarlet Pimpernel |
