| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Marie by H. Rider Haggard: white as a sheet.
"Mein Gott, mynheer," he said, "I am minded to make you answer for such
talk," and his hand went to the knife at his girdle.
"What!" shouted Retief, "do you want another shooting match? Well, if
so I am ready with whole bullets or with split ones. None shall say
that Pieter Retief was afraid of any man, and, least of all, of one who
is not ashamed to try to steal a prize as a hyena steals a bone from a
lion. Come on, Hernan Pereira, come on!"
Now, I am sure I cannot say what would have happened, although I am
quite certain that Pereira had no stomach for a duel with the
redoubtable Retief, a man whose courage was as proverbial throughout the
Marie |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: young men take their first steps on life's road, each saw immense
changes in the other, quite a new reflection of the society in which
they had taken those first steps. Both had changed greatly since
they last met and both were in a hurry to show the changes that had
taken place in them.
"Oh, you damned dandies! Clean and fresh as if you'd been to a fete,
not like us sinners of the line," cried Rostov, with martial swagger
and with baritone notes in his voice, new to Boris, pointing to his
own mud-bespattered breeches. The German landlady, hearing Rostov's
loud voice, popped her head in at the door.
"Eh, is she pretty?" he asked with a wink.
War and Peace |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert: at funerals. "Take him away then! my suffering is too great! begone!
kill me like him!" The servants of Moloch were astonished that the
great Hamilcar was so weak-spirited. They were almost moved by it.
A noise of naked feet became audible, with a broken throat-rattling
like the breathing of a wild beast speeding along, and a man, pale,
terrible, and with outspread arms appeared on the threshold of the
third gallery, between the ivory pots; he exclaimed:
"My child!"
Hamilcar threw himself with a bound upon the slave, and covering the
man's mouth with his hand exclaimed still more loudly:
"It is the old man who reared him! he calls him 'my child!' it will
Salammbo |
