| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: previous benignity of manner. "I am at home here, Phoebe, you
must recollect, and you are the stranger. I will just step in,
therefore, and see for myself how Clifford is, and assure him and
Hepzibah of my kindly feelings and best wishes. It is right, at
this juncture, that they should both hear from my own lips how
much I desire to serve them. Ha! here is Hepzibah herself!"
Such was the case. The vibrations of the Judge's voice had
reached the old gentlewoman in the parlor, where she sat, with
face averted, waiting on her brother's slumber. She now issued
forth, as would appear, to defend the entrance, looking, we must
needs say, amazingly like the dragon which, in fairy tales, is
House of Seven Gables |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce: blood.
Fair Venus, speared by Diomed,
Restrained the raging chief and said:
"Behold, rash mortal, whom you've bled --
Your soul's stained white with ichorshed!"
Mary Doke
ICONOCLAST, n. A breaker of idols, the worshipers whereof are
imperfectly gratified by the performance, and most strenuously protest
that he unbuildeth but doth not reedify, that he pulleth down but
pileth not up. For the poor things would have other idols in place of
those he thwacketh upon the mazzard and dispelleth. But the
The Devil's Dictionary |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: in red velvet caps, lacquered sledges and bear-skin coats began to
appear, and carriages with rich hammer-cloths flew swiftly through the
streets, their wheels scrunching the snow. Akakiy Akakievitch gazed
upon all this as upon a novel sight. He had not been in the streets
during the evening for years. He halted out of curiosity before a
shop-window to look at a picture representing a handsome woman, who
had thrown off her shoe, thereby baring her whole foot in a very
pretty way; whilst behind her the head of a man with whiskers and a
handsome moustache peeped through the doorway of another room. Akakiy
Akakievitch shook his head and laughed, and then went on his way. Why
did he laugh? Either because he had met with a thing utterly unknown,
Taras Bulba and Other Tales |
