| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: braced herself, and, half turning, seemed to raise herself with an effort,
and at once to pour erect into the air a rain of energy, a column of
spray, looking at the same time animated and alive as if all her energies
were being fused into force, burning and illuminating (quietly though she
sat, taking up her stocking again), and into this delicious fecundity,
this fountain and spray of life, the fatal sterility of the male plunged
itself, like a beak of brass, barren and bare. He wanted sympathy. He
was a failure, he said. Mrs Ramsay flashed her needles. Mr Ramsay
repeated, never taking his eyes from her face, that he was a failure.
She blew the words back at him. "Charles Tansley..." she said. But he
must have more than that. It was sympathy he wanted, to be assured of his
To the Lighthouse |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: those voices strengthen upon the ear; till at length the petition
ended, and the conversation of an aged man, and of a woman broken
and decayed like himself, became distinctly audible to the lady
as she knelt. But those strangers appeared not to stand in the
hollow depth between the three hills. Their voices were
encompassed and reechoed by the walls of a chamber, the windows
of which were rattling in the breeze; the regular vibration of a
clock, the crackling of a fire, and the tinkling of the embers as
they fell among the ashes, rendered the scene almost as vivid as
if painted to the eye. By a melancholy hearth sat these two old
people, the man calmly despondent, the woman querulous and
Twice Told Tales |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling: Sahibs had been helping him to catch Moti. Whereat his Mamma
smacked Tods for interfering with the administration of the Empire;
but Tods met the Legal Member the next day, and told him in
confidence that if the Legal Member ever wanted to catch a goat, he,
Tods, would give him all the help in his power. "Thank you, Tods,"
said the Legal Member.
Tods was the idol of some eighty jhampanis, and half as many saises.
He saluted them all as "O Brother." It never entered his head that
any living human being could disobey his orders; and he was the
buffer between the servants and his Mamma's wrath. The working of
that household turned on Tods, who was adored by every one from the
|
