| 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: full coming, but fell down at his feet upon the silver floor,
with a mighty great and terrible ringing sound."
No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than--as if a
shield of brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a
floor of silver--I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic,
and clangorous, yet apparently muffled reverberation. Completely
unnerved, I leaped to my feet; but the measured rocking movement
of Usher was undisturbed. I rushed to the chair in which he sat.
His eyes were bent fixedly before him, and throughout his whole
countenance there reigned a stony rigidity. But, as I placed my
hand upon his shoulder, there came a strong shudder over his
The Fall of the House of Usher |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An International Episode by Henry James: She was more in the Boston style; she had lived a great deal
in Boston, and she was very highly educated. Boston girls,
it was propounded, were more like English young ladies.
Lord Lambeth had presently a chance to test the truth of this proposition,
for on the company rising in compliance with a suggestion from their
hostess that they should walk down to the rocks and look at the sea,
the young Englishman again found himself, as they strolled across the grass,
in proximity to Mrs. Westgate's sister. Though she was but a girl of twenty,
she appeared to feel the obligation to exert an active hospitality; and this
was, perhaps, the more to be noticed as she seemed by nature a reserved
and retiring person, and had little of her sister's fraternizing quality.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: Charles of Orleans is in love, and hear him ring the changes
through the whole gamut of dainty and tender sentiment. But
there is never a spark of passion; and heaven alone knows
whether there was any real woman in the matter, or the whole
thing was an exercise in fancy. If these poems were indeed
inspired by some living mistress, one would think he had
never seen, never heard, and never touched her. There is
nothing in any one of these so numerous love-songs to
indicate who or what the lady was. Was she dark or fair,
passionate or gentle like himself, witty or simple? Was it
always one woman? or are there a dozen here immortalised in
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