| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Eve and David by Honore de Balzac: nail-studded door, the low, worn archway which the better deserves the
qualification "cyclopean," because the jailer's peephole or judas
looks out like a single eye from the front of the building. As you
enter you find yourself in a corridor which runs across the entire
width of the building, with a row of doors of cells that give upon the
prison yard and are lighted by high windows covered with a square iron
grating. The jailer's house is separated from these cells by an
archway in the middle, through which you catch a glimpse of the iron
gate of the prison yard. The jailer installed David in a cell next to
the archway, thinking that he would like to have a man of David's
stamp as a near neighbor for the sake of company.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens: surpassing agility and brilliancy of execution, that the spectators
could not be sufficiently enthusiastic in their admiration; and
their host protested, with tears in his eyes, that he had never
truly felt his blindness until that moment.
But the host withdrawing--probably to weep in secret--soon returned
with the information that it wanted little more than an hour of
day, and that all the cocks in Barbican had already begun to crow,
as if their lives depended on it. At this intelligence, the
'Prentice Knights arose in haste, and marshalling into a line,
filed off one by one and dispersed with all speed to their several
homes, leaving their leader to pass the grating last.
Barnaby Rudge |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte: "Come to me--come to me entirely now," said he; and added, in his
deepest tone, speaking in my ear as his cheek was laid on mine,
"Make my happiness--I will make yours."
"God pardon me!" he subjoined ere long; "and man meddle not with me:
I have her, and will hold her."
"There is no one to meddle, sir. I have no kindred to interfere."
"No--that is the best of it," he said. And if I had loved him less
I should have thought his accent and look of exultation savage; but,
sitting by him, roused from the nightmare of parting--called to the
paradise of union--I thought only of the bliss given me to drink in
so abundant a flow. Again and again he said, "Are you happy, Jane?"
Jane Eyre |
