| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Chronicles of the Canongate by Walter Scott: pure antiquity--a sort of greengrocer's stall erected in front of
my ironmongery wares, garlanding the rusty memorials of ancient
times with cresses, cabbages, leeks, and water purpy.
As I have some idea that I am writing too well to be understood,
I humble myself to ordinary language, and aver, with becoming
modesty, that I do think myself capable of sustaining a
publication of a miscellaneous nature, as like to the Spectator
or the Guardian, the Mirror or the Lounger, as my poor abilities
may be able to accomplish. Not that I have any purpose of
imitating Johnson, whose general learning and power of expression
I do not deny, but many of whose Ramblers are little better than
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Herbert West: Reanimator by H. P. Lovecraft: had first choice in every case, so that it might be necessary
to remain in Arkham during the summer, when only the limited summer-school
classes were held. In the end, though, luck favoured us; for one
day we heard of an almost ideal case in the potter’s field; a
brawny young workman drowned only the morning before in Summer’s
Pond, and buried at the town’s expense without delay or embalming.
That afternoon we found the new grave, and determined to begin
work soon after midnight.
It was a repulsive task that we undertook
in the black small hours, even though we lacked at that time the
special horror of graveyards which later experiences brought to
Herbert West: Reanimator |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Last War: A World Set Free by H. G. Wells: cold up there, in a hungry, spiritless, morning mood; they came
slanting down like a sword swung by a lazy man, and not so
rapidly but that he was able to slip away from under them and get
between them and Berlin. They began challenging him in German
with a megaphone when they were still perhaps a mile away. The
words came to him, rolled up into a mere blob of hoarse sound.
Then, gathering alarm from his grim silence, they gave chase and
swept down, a hundred yards above him perhaps, and a couple of
hundred behind. They were beginning to understand what he was.
He ceased to watch them and concentrated himself on the city
ahead, and for a time the two aeroplanes raced....
The Last War: A World Set Free |
