| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Chouans by Honore de Balzac: masses seek them for a time in their own ranks, then they raise their
eyes and see these lordly souls above them.
Such reflections as these seemed to Mademoiselle de Verneuil to
justify and even to ennoble her thoughts of vengeance; this travail of
her soul and its expectations gave her vigor enough to bear the
unusual fatigues of this strange journey. At the end of each property
Galope-Chopine made the women dismount from their donkeys and climb
the obstructions; then, mounting again, they made their way through
the boggy paths which already felt the approach of winter. The
combination of tall trees, sunken paths, and enclosed places, kept the
soil in a state of humidity which wrapped the travellers in a mantle
The Chouans |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells: inexplicable.
There came a wild rush of anthropological lore into her brain, a
flare of indecorous humor. It was one of the secret troubles of
her mind, this grotesque twist her ideas would sometimes take, as
though they rebelled and rioted. After all, she found herself
reflecting, behind her aunt's complacent visage there was a past
as lurid as any one's--not, of course, her aunt's own personal
past, which was apparently just that curate and almost incredibly
jejune, but an ancestral past with all sorts of scandalous things
in it: fire and slaughterings, exogamy, marriage by capture,
corroborees, cannibalism! Ancestresses with perhaps dim
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard: succeeded after some difficulty in pulling out the cartridge which had
so nearly been the cause of my death, and removing the obstruction in
the barrel. It was very little thicker than a postage-stamp; certainly
not thicker than a piece of writing-paper. This done, I loaded the gun,
bound a handkerchief round my wrist and hand to staunch the flowing of
the blood, and started on again.
"I had noticed that the lioness went into a thick green bush, or rather
cluster of bushes, growing near the water, about fifty yards higher up,
for there was a little stream running down the kloof, and I walked
towards this bush. When I got there, however, I could see nothing, so I
took up a big stone and threw it into the bushes. I believe that it hit
Long Odds |
