| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Breaking Point by Mary Roberts Rinehart: paper or, huge and shockingly colored, from the sheets on the bill
boards.
He formed the habit of calling on her in the afternoons at her hotel,
and he saw that she liked it. It was often lonely, she explained.
He sent her flowers and cigarettes, and he found her poised and
restful, and sometimes, when she was off guard, with the lines of
old suffering in her face.
She sat still. She didn't fidget, as Nina did. She listened, too.
She was not as beautiful as she appeared on the stage, but she was
attractive, and he stilled his conscience with the knowledge that
she placed no undue emphasis on his visits. In her world men came
The Breaking Point |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas: he had decided to relate all that had passed. M. de Treville
would doubtless give him good advice as to the whole affair.
Besides, as M. de Treville saw the queen almost daily, he might
be able to draw from her Majesty some intelligence of the poor
young woman, whom they were doubtless making pay very dearly for
her devotedness to her mistress.
M. de Treville listened to the young man's account with a
seriousness which proved that he saw something else in this
adventure besides a love affair. When D'Artagnan had finished,
he said, "Hum! All this savors of his Eminence, a league off."
"But what is to be done?" said D'Artagnan.
The Three Musketeers |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce: them scampering on the hills in the evening twilight. Ludwig
Binkerhoof saw three as recently as 1792, in the Black Forest, and
Sneddeker avers that in 1803 they drove a party of miners out of a
Silesian mine. Basing our computations upon data supplied by these
statements, we find that the gnomes were probably extinct as early as
1764.
GNOSTICS, n. A sect of philosophers who tried to engineer a fusion
between the early Christians and the Platonists. The former would not
go into the caucus and the combination failed, greatly to the chagrin
of the fusion managers.
GNU, n. An animal of South Africa, which in its domesticated state
The Devil's Dictionary |
