| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Distinguished Provincial at Paris by Honore de Balzac: his clothes with a better grace. They looked as though they belonged
to him. He wore his best tightly-fitting, light-colored trousers, and
a dress-coat. His boots, a very elegant pair adorned with tassels, had
cost him forty francs. His thick, fine, golden hair was scented and
crimped into bright, rippling curls. Self-confidence and belief in his
future lighted up his forehead. He paid careful attention to his
almost feminine hands, the filbert nails were a spotless pink, and the
white contours of his chin were dazzling by contrast with a black
satin stock. Never did a more beautiful youth come down from the hills
of the Latin Quarter.
Glorious as a Greek god, Lucien took a cab, and reached the Cafe
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells: lines of a canebrake in one direction, a dense tangle of palm-trees
on the other, separating us from the ravine with the huts,
and to the north the hazy horizon of the Pacific Ocean.
"Sixty-two, sixty-three," counted Moreau. "There are four more."
"I do not see the Leopard-man," said I.
Presently Moreau sounded the great horn again, and at the sound
of it all the Beast People writhed and grovelled in the dust.
Then, slinking out of the canebrake, stooping near the ground
and trying to join the dust-throwing circle behind Moreau's back,
came the Leopard-man. The last of the Beast People to arrive was the little
Ape-man. The earlier animals, hot and weary with their grovelling,
The Island of Doctor Moreau |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert: distinguished gleaming in the shade. A naked sword leaned against a
stool by the side of a shield; whips of hippopotamus leather, cymbals,
bells, and necklaces were displayed pell-mell on baskets of esparto-
grass; a felt rug lay soiled with crumbs of black bread; some copper
money was carelessly heaped upon a round stone in a corner, and
through the rents in the canvas the wind brought the dust from
without, together with the smell of the elephants, which might be
heard eating and shaking their chains.
"Who are you?" said Matho.
She looked slowly around her without replying; then her eyes were
arrested in the background, where something bluish and sparkling fell
Salammbo |
