| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: of intrusiveness amid the crumbling and ivy-covered decay of the
ancient walls.
On a certain day, however, in the particular year which has
now been reached by this narrative--the month being early June--
the features of the town excite little interest, though many
visitors arrive by the trains; some down-trains, in especial,
nearly emptying themselves here. It is the week of the Great Wessex
Agricultural Show, whose vast encampment spreads over the open
outskirts of the town like the tents of an investing army.
Rows of marquees, huts, booths, pavilions, arcades, porticoes--
every kind of structure short of a permanent one--
Jude the Obscure |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: it difficult to make the ecclestiastical authorities censure
Birotteau.
At the moment when Monseigneur Hyacinthe, Bishop of Troyes, drove
along the quay Saint-Symphorien in a post-chaise on his way to Paris
poor Birotteau had been placed in an armchair in the sun on a terrace
above the road. The unhappy priest, smitten by the archbishop, was
pale and haggard. Grief, stamped on every feature, distorted the face
that was once so mildly gay. Illness had dimmed his eyes, formerly
brightened by the pleasures of good living and devoid of serious
ideas, with a veil which simulated thought. It was but the skeleton of
the old Birotteau who had rolled only one year earlier so vacuous but
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, etc. by Oscar Wilde: and wondered if the wretched man would be caught, and how he had
been scarred. Perhaps, some day, his own name might be placarded
on the walls of London. Some day, perhaps, a price would be set on
his head also.
The thought made him sick with horror. He turned on his heel, and
hurried on into the night.
Where he went he hardly knew. He had a dim memory of wandering
through a labyrinth of sordid houses, of being lost in a giant web
of sombre streets, and it was bright dawn when he found himself at
last in Piccadilly Circus. As he strolled home towards Belgrave
Square, he met the great waggons on their way to Covent Garden.
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