| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: act of sitting down to dinner, a glance of exceeding gentleness devoid
of hardihood. She saw that her mother had been weeping; the redness of
those withered eyelids shook her heart, but she hid her emotion. No
one touched the dinner which was served to them. A horror of food is
one of the chief symptoms which reveal a great crisis in life. All
three rose from table without having addressed a single word to one
another.
When Ginevra had placed herself between her father and mother in the
great and gloomy salon, Piombo tried to speak, but his voice failed
him; he tried to walk, but he had no strength in his legs. He returned
to his seat and rang the bell.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: "Why don't you tell us you're glad?" Cassandra was so glad that the
tears ran down her cheeks. The certainty of Katharine's engagement not
only relieved her of a thousand vague fears and self-reproaches, but
entirely quenched that spirit of criticism which had lately impaired
her belief in Katharine. Her old faith came back to her. She seemed to
behold her with that curious intensity which she had lost; as a being
who walks just beyond our sphere, so that life in their presence is a
heightened process, illuminating not only ourselves but a considerable
stretch of the surrounding world. Next moment she contrasted her own
lot with theirs and gave back the ring.
"I won't take that unless William gives it me himself," she said.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: an unquiet grave. His home would include the home of the dead
and buried wizard, and would thus afford the ghost of the latter
a kind of privilege to haunt its new apartments, and the chambers
into which future bridegrooms were to lead their brides, and where
children of the Pyncheon blood were to be born. The terror and
ugliness of Maule's crime, and the wretchedness of his punishment,
would darken the freshly plastered walls, and infect them early
with the scent of an old and melancholy house. Why, then, --while
so much of the soil around him was bestrewn with the virgin forest
leaves,--why should Colonel Pyncheon prefer a site that had
already been accurst?
House of Seven Gables |
