| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Confidence by Henry James: felt a keen relish for the picturesqueness of the country.
But it was not, on this occasion, of the charms of the landscape
or the pleasures of locomotion that they chiefly discoursed.
Their talk took a more closely personal turn. It was a year
since they had met, and there were many questions to ask and answer,
many arrears of gossip to make up. As they stretched themselves on
the grass on a sun-warmed hill-side, beneath a great German oak whose
arms were quiet in the blue summer air, there was a lively exchange
of impressions, opinions, speculations, anecdotes. Gordon Wright
was surely an excellent friend. He took an interest in you.
He asked no idle questions and made no vague professions;
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: "Positively, no!" answered Clifford. "It puts them too miserably
at disadvantage. For example, sir, in a dark, low, cross-beamed,
panelled room of an old house, let us suppose a dead man,
sitting in an arm-chair, with a blood-stain on his shirt-bosom,
--and let us add to our hypothesis another man, issuing from the
house, which he feels to be over-filled with the dead man's
presence,--and let us lastly imagine him fleeing, Heaven knows
whither, at the speed of a hurricane, by railroad! Now, sir, if
the fugutive alight in some distant town, and find all the people
babbling about that self-same dead man, whom he has fled so far
to avoid the sight and thought of, will you not allow that his
House of Seven Gables |
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: evening, having informed me abruptly that the lady Madeline was
no more, he stated his intention of preserving her corpse for a
fortnight, (previously to its final interment), in one of the
numerous vaults within the main walls of the building. The
worldly reason, however, assigned for this singular proceeding,
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
The Fall of the House of Usher |
