| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain: tarried there but a few minutes, and then began the long
and troublesome descent from the cabin to Chamonix.
He probably reached there about two or three o'clock
in the morning, after having been afoot among the rocks
and glaciers during two days and two nights. His endurance
was equal to his daring.
The cause of the unaccountable delay of Sir George and
the relief parties among the heights where the disaster
had happened was a thick fog--or, partly that and partly
the slow and difficult work of conveying the dead body
down the perilous steeps.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: shop fell upon both their figures.
"Good evening to you, honored sir," said he, making a low bow,
and still retaining his hold of the skirt. "I pray you tell me
whereabouts is the dwelling of my kinsman, Major Molineux."
The youth's question was uttered very loudly; and one of the
barbers, whose razor was descending on a well-soaped chin, and
another who was dressing a Ramillies wig, left their occupations,
and came to the door. The citizen, in the mean time, turned a
long-favored countenance upon Robin, and answered him in a tone
of excessive anger and annoyance. His two sepulchral hems,
however, broke into the very centre of his rebuke, with most
The Snow Image |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: along the frail wall of a dwelling covered by a roof /en colombage/
which bends beneath the weight of years, and whose rotting shingles
are twisted by the alternate action of sun and rain. In another place
blackened, worn-out window-sills, with delicate sculptures now
scarcely discernible, seem too weak to bear the brown clay pots from
which springs the heart's-ease or the rose-bush of some poor working-
woman. Farther on are doors studded with enormous nails, where the
genius of our forefathers has traced domestic hieroglyphics, of which
the meaning is now lost forever. Here a Protestant attested his
belief; there a Leaguer cursed Henry IV.; elsewhere some bourgeois has
carved the insignia of his /noblesse de cloches/, symbols of his long-
Eugenie Grandet |
