| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft: was made. Besides nameless rites and human sacrifices there were
certain queer hereditary rituals addressed to a supreme elder
devil or tornasuk; and of this Professor Webb had taken a careful
phonetic copy from an aged angekok or wizard-priest, expressing
the sounds in Roman letters as best he knew how. But just now
of prime significance was the fetish which this cult had cherished,
and around which they danced when the aurora leaped high over
the ice cliffs. It was, the professor stated, a very crude bas-relief
of stone, comprising a hideous picture and some cryptic writing.
And so far as he could tell, it was a rough parallel in all essential
features of the bestial thing now lying before the meeting.
Call of Cthulhu |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne: penetrated the secrets of our satellite. In the seventeenth
century a certain David Fabricius boasted of having seen with
his own eyes the inhabitants of the moon. In 1649 a Frenchman,
one Jean Baudoin, published a `Journey performed from the Earth
to the Moon by Domingo Gonzalez,' a Spanish adventurer. At the
same period Cyrano de Bergerac published that celebrated
`Journeys in the Moon' which met with such success in France.
Somewhat later another Frenchman, named Fontenelle, wrote `The
Plurality of Worlds,' a _chef-d'oeuvre_ of its time. About 1835
a small treatise, translated from the New York _American_, related
how Sir John Herschel, having been despatched to the Cape of
From the Earth to the Moon |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Herodias by Gustave Flaubert: Thracians, a Greek and two Germans; besides huntsmen and herdsmen, the
Sultan of Palmyra, and sailors from Eziongaber. Before each guest was
placed a roll of soft bread, upon which to wipe the fingers. As soon
as they were seated, hands were stretched out with the eagerness of a
vulture's claws, seizing upon olives, pistachios, and almonds. Every
face was joyous, every head was crowned with flowers, except those of
the Pharisees, who refused to wear the wreaths, regarding them as a
symbol of Roman voluptuousness and vice. They shuddered when the
attendants sprinkled them with galburnum and incense, the use of which
the Pharisees reserved strictly for services in the Temple.
Antipas observed that Aulus rubbed himself under the arms, as if
Herodias |
