| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: the Happy Valley, with a vague idea that some secret of a contented
life had there been elaborated, which might at least serve
Clifford and herself for this one day. But the Happy Valley
had a cloud over it. Hepzibah troubled her auditor, moreover, by
innumerable sins of emphasis, which he seemed to detect, without
any reference to the meaning; nor, in fact, did he appear to take
much note of the sense of what she read, but evidently felt the
tedium of the lecture, without harvesting its profit. His sister's
voice, too, naturally harsh, had, in the course of her sorrowful
lifetime, contracted a kind of croak, which, when it once gets
into the human throat, is as ineradicable as sin. In both sexes,
House of Seven Gables |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: morrow," he writes once, "and so shall we commune at large at
afternoon. This day you know to be the day of my study and
prayer unto God; yet if your trouble be intolerable, or, if
you think my presence may release your pain, do as the Spirit
shall move you. . . . Your messenger found me in bed, after a
sore trouble and most dolorous night, and so dolour may
complain to dolour when we two meet. . . . And this is more
plain than ever I spoke, to let you know you have a companion
in trouble." (3) Once we have the curtain raised for a
moment, and can look at the two together for the length of a
phrase. "After the writing of this preceding," writes Knox,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Selected Writings of Guy De Maupassant by Guy De Maupassant: the house answered her, so sharp a cry that one might have
thought some animal uttered it. Old Hauser repeated: "Hi!
Gaspard!" and they heard another cry, similar to the first.
Then the three men, the father and the two sons, tried to open
the door, but it resisted their efforts. From the empty cow-stall
they took a beam to serve as a battering-ram, and hurled it
against the door with all their might. The wood gave way, and the
boards flew into splinters; then the house was shaken by a loud
voice, and inside, behind the sideboard which was overturned,
they saw a man standing upright, his hair falling on to his
shoulders and a beard descending to his breast, with shining eyes
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