| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy: hand, when the cat overturned the coal-scuttle; moreover,
she would persistently thank the parlour-maid for
everything, till one day, as soon as the girl was gone from
the room, Henchard broke out with, "Good God, why dostn't
leave off thanking that girl as if she were a goddess-born!
Don't I pay her a dozen pound a year to do things for 'ee?"
Elizabeth shrank so visibly at the exclamation that he
became sorry a few minutes after, and said that he did not
mean to be rough.
These domestic exhibitions were the small protruding
needlerocks which suggested rather than revealed what was
The Mayor of Casterbridge |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen: cast a warm glow over his snug bachelor apartment, and a bottle
of some choice claret stood ready by his elbow. His dinner
digested, he would make a brief pretence of reading the evening
paper, but the mere catalogue of news soon palled upon him, and
Clarke would find himself casting glances of warm desire in the
direction of an old Japanese bureau, which stood at a pleasant
distance from the hearth. Like a boy before a jam-closet, for
a few minutes he would hover indecisive, but lust always
prevailed, and Clarke ended by drawing up his chair, lighting a
candle, and sitting down before the bureau. Its pigeon-holes
and drawers teemed with documents on the most morbid subjects,
The Great God Pan |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: young woman in whom Marcher's expert attention had recognised from
the first a dependent with a pride that might ache though it didn't
bristle. Nothing for a long time had made him easier than the
thought that the aching must have been much soothed by Miss
Bartram's now finding herself able to set up a small home in
London. She had acquired property, to an amount that made that
luxury just possible, under her aunt's extremely complicated will,
and when the whole matter began to be straightened out, which
indeed took time, she let him know that the happy issue was at last
in view. He had seen her again before that day, both because she
had more than once accompanied the ancient lady to town and because
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