| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen: one or two other very curious points came out. It appears that
the occupants of the house were a Mr. and Mrs. Charles Herbert;
he was said to be a landed proprietor, though it struck most
people that Paul Street was not exactly the place to look for
country gentry. As for Mrs. Herbert, nobody seemed to know
who or what she was, and, between ourselves, I fancy the divers
after her history found themselves in rather strange waters. Of
course they both denied knowing anything about the deceased, and
in default of any evidence against them they were discharged.
But some very odd things came out about them. Though it was
between five and six in the morning when the dead man was
The Great God Pan |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Man of Business by Honore de Balzac: when his name in politics was 'the courageous Cerizet." He was sent
off into a very snug little sub-prefecture. Unluckily for him, it is
one thing to be in opposition--any missile is good enough to throw, so
long as the flight lasts; but quite another to be in office. Three
months later, he was obliged to send in his resignation. Had he not
taken it into his head to attempt to win popularity? Still, as he had
done nothing as yet to imperil his title of 'courageous Cerizet,' the
Government proposed by way of compensation that he should manage a
newspaper; nominally an Opposition newspaper, but Ministerialist /in
petto/. So the fall of this noble nature was really due to the
Government. To Cerizet, as manager of the paper, it was rather too
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Heart of the West by O. Henry: consent to refrain from contributing to the world's noises. So the
Kid, by the time he was within a mile or two of Tonia's /jacal/, had
reluctantly allowed his song to die away--not because his vocal
performance had become less charming to his own ears, but because his
laryngeal muscles were aweary.
As though he were in a circus ring the speckled roan wheeled and
danced through the labyrinth of pear until at length his rider knew by
certain landmarks that the Lone Wolf Crossing was close at hand. Then,
where the pear was thinner, he caught sight of the grass roof of the
/jacal/ and the hackberry tree on the edge of the arroyo. A few yards
farther the Kid stopped the roan and gazed intently through the
Heart of the West |
