| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens: husband's.'
'--Much more than mine, sir,' said Mrs Varden; 'a great deal more.
I have often had my doubts. It's a--'
'A bad example,' suggested Mr Chester. 'It is. No doubt it is.
Your daughter is at that age when to set before her an
encouragement for young persons to rebel against their parents on
this most important point, is particularly injudicious. You are
quite right. I ought to have thought of that myself, but it
escaped me, I confess--so far superior are your sex to ours, dear
madam, in point of penetration and sagacity.'
Mrs Varden looked as wise as if she had really said something to
Barnaby Rudge |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde: Of all the rooms this was the brightest and the most beautiful.
The walls were covered with a pink-flowered Lucca damask, patterned
with birds and dotted with dainty blossoms of silver; the furniture
was of massive silver, festooned with florid wreaths, and swinging
Cupids; in front of the two large fire-places stood great screens
broidered with parrots and peacocks, and the floor, which was of
sea-green onyx, seemed to stretch far away into the distance. Nor
was he alone. Standing under the shadow of the doorway, at the
extreme end of the room, he saw a little figure watching him. His
heart trembled, a cry of joy broke from his lips, and he moved out
into the sunlight. As he did so, the figure moved out also, and he
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: the views of the enlightened. But the flight of my Lafaele marks
the grosser terrors of the ignorant.
This belief in the exorcising efficacy of funeral rites perhaps
explains a fact, otherwise amazing, that no Polynesian seems at all
to share our European horror of human bones and mummies. Of the
first they made their cherished ornaments; they preserved them in
houses or in mortuary caves; and the watchers of royal sepulchres
dwelt with their children among the bones of generations. The
mummy, even in the making, was as little feared. In the Marquesas,
on the extreme coast, it was made by the household with continual
unction and exposure to the sun; in the Carolines, upon the
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