| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis: little while ago since these things were more alive to her than
anything else in the world. The seat was under the
currant-bushes still. Very little time ago; but she was a woman
now,--and, look here! A chance ray of sunlight slanted in,
falling barely on the dust, the hot heaps of wool, waking a
stronger smell of copperas; the chicken saw it, and began to
chirp a weak, dismal joy, more sorrowful than tears. She went to
the cage, and put her finger in for it to peck at. Standing
there, if the vacant life coming rose up before her in that hard
blare of sunlight, she looked at it with the same still, waiting
eyes, that told nothing.
Margret Howth: A Story of To-day |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott: wine did its office on all but the Master of Ravenswood, a title
which he still retained, though forfeiture had attached to that
of his father. He, while passing around the cup which he himself
did not taste, soon listened to a thousand exclamations against
the Lord Keeper, and passionate protestations of attachment to
himself, and to the honour of his house. He listened with dark
and sullen brow to ebullitions which he considered justly as
equally evanescent with the crimson bubbles on the brink of the
goblet, or at least with the vapours which its contents excited
in the brains of the revellers around him.
When the last flask was emptied, they took their leave with deep
The Bride of Lammermoor |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: was one which I did not feel at liberty to dispute. The brother
had been led to his resolution (so he told me) by consideration
of the unusual character of the malady of the deceased, of
certain obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her medical
men, and of the remote and exposed situation of the burial-ground
of the family. I will not deny that when I called to mind the
sinister countenance of the person whom I met upon the staircase,
on the day of my arrival at the house, I had no desire to oppose
what I regarded as at best but a harmless, and by no means an
unnatural, precaution.
At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the
The Fall of the House of Usher |
