| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: was that of Lawyer Giles, as people still called him in courtesy;
an elderly ragamuffin, in his soiled shirtsleeves and tow-cloth
trousers. This poor fellow had been an attorney, in what he
called his better days, a sharp practitioner, and in great vogue
among the village litigants; but flip, and sling, and toddy, and
cocktails, imbibed at all hours, morning, noon, and night, had
caused him to slide from intellectual to various kinds and
degrees of bodily labor, till at last, to adopt his own phrase,
he slid into a soap-vat. In other words, Giles was now a
soap-boiler, in a small way. He had come to be but the fragment
of a human being, a part of one foot having been chopped off by
The Snow Image |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Underground City by Jules Verne: There he would descend to the depths of the pit, if necessary,
to find Harry, and with him was sure to be the engineer James Starr.
"They haven't turned up again," said he to himself. "Why? Has anything
prevented them? Could any work of importance keep them still at
the bottom of the mine? I must find out!" and Ryan, hastening his steps,
arrived in less than an hour at the Yarrow shaft.
Externally nothing was changed. The same silence around.
Not a living creature was moving in that desert region.
Jack entered the ruined shed which covered the opening of the shaft.
He gazed down into the dark abyss--nothing was to be seen.
He listened--nothing was to be heard.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte: watching them from the windows during their play; at times, he
would follow them through the grounds, and too often came suddenly
upon them while they were dabbling in the forbidden well, talking
to the coachman in the stables, or revelling in the filth of the
farm-yard - and I, meanwhile, wearily standing, by, having
previously exhausted my energy in vain attempts to get them away.
Often, too, he would unexpectedly pop his head into the schoolroom
while the young people were at meals, and find them spilling their
milk over the table and themselves, plunging their fingers into
their own or each other's mugs, or quarrelling over their victuals
like a set of tiger's cubs. If I were quiet at the moment, I was
Agnes Grey |
