| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Merry Men by Robert Louis Stevenson: on the floor; with the bare stone walls and the bare wooden floor,
and the three patchwork rugs that were of yore its sole adornment -
poor man's patchwork, the like of it unknown in cities, woven with
homespun, and Sunday black, and sea-cloth polished on the bench of
rowing. The room, like the house, had been a sort of wonder in
that country-side, it was so neat and habitable; and to see it now,
shamed by these incongruous additions, filled me with indignation
and a kind of anger. In view of the errand I had come upon to
Aros, the feeling was baseless and unjust; but it burned high, at
the first moment, in my heart.
'Mary, girl,' said I, 'this is the place I had learned to call my
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: cool-headed, slow of impulse, and disgustingly practical; in
that, as in everything else, she had herself so provokingly well
in hand. Of course, it would be she, always mistress of herself
in any situation, she, who would never be lifted one inch from
the ground by it, and who would go on superintending her
gardeners and workmen as usual--it would be she who got him.
Perhaps some of them suspected that this was exactly why
she did get him, and it but nettled them the more.
Caroline's coolness, her capableness, her general success,
especially exasperated people because they felt that, for the
most part, she had made herself what she was; that she had cold-
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen: read out the paragraph to Villiers as the uproar in the street
rose and fell. The window was open and the air seemed full of
noise and terror.
"Another gentleman has fallen a victim to the terrible
epidemic of suicide which for the last month has prevailed in
the West End. Mr. Sidney Crashaw, of Stoke House, Fulham, and
King's Pomeroy, Devon, was found, after a prolonged search,
hanging dead from the branch of a tree in his garden at one
o'clock today. The deceased gentleman dined last night at the
Carlton Club and seemed in his usual health and spirits. He
left the club at about ten o'clock, and was seen walking
The Great God Pan |
