| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: Oak-boughs moan in the haunted air;
Lamps blow down with a crash and tinkle of glass . . .
Darkness whistles . . . Wild hours pass . . .
And those whom sleep eludes lie wide-eyed, hearing
Above their heads a goblin night go by;
Children are waked, and cry,
The young girl hears the roar in her sleep, and dreams
That her lover is caught in a burning tower,
She clutches the pillow, she gasps for breath, she screams . . .
And then by degrees her breath grows quiet and slow,
She dreams of an evening, long ago:
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Spirit of the Border by Zane Grey: missionary's bell summoning the Christian Indians to the evening service.
Chapter XI.
The, sultry, drowsy, summer days passed with no untoward event to mar their
slumbering tranquillity. Life for the newcomers to the Village of Peace
brought a content, the like of which they had never dreamed of. Mr. Wells at
once began active work among the Indians, preaching to them through an
interpreter; Nell and Kate, in hours apart from household duties, busied
themselves brightening their new abode, and Jim entered upon the task of
acquainting himself with the modes and habits of the redmen. Truly, the young
people might have found perfect happiness in this new and novel life, if only
Joe had returned. His disappearance and subsequent absence furnished a theme
The Spirit of the Border |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: I indulged a vague hope that the excitement which now agitated
the hypochondriac, might find relief (for the history of mental
disorder is full of similar anomalies) even in the extremeness of
the folly which I should read. Could I have judged, indeed, by
the wild overstrained air of vivacity with which he
hearkened, or apparently hearkened, to the words of the tale, I
might well have congratulated myself upon the success of my
design.
I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story where
Ethelred, the hero of the Trist, having sought in vain for
peaceable admission into the dwelling of the hermit, proceeds to
The Fall of the House of Usher |
