| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Wrong Box by Stevenson & Osbourne: have nothing to do with it.'
'Then you must allow me to do the best I can,' returned his
nephew. 'Believe me, I have a distinct talent for this sort of
difficulty.'
'We might forward it to that pest-house, the Conservative Club,'
observed Mr Bloomfield. 'It might damage them in the eyes of
their constituents; and it could be profitably worked up in the
local journal.'
'If you see any political capital in the thing,' said Gideon,
'you may have it for me.'
'No, no, Gid--no, no, I thought you might. I will have no hand in
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: romancer.
Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of the
second and most extraordinary coincidence, by a thousand
conflicting sensations, in which wonder and extreme terror were
predominant, I still retained sufficient presence of mind to
avoid exciting, by any observation, the sensitive nervousness of
my companion. I was by no means certain that he had noticed the
sounds in question; although, assuredly, a strange alteration
had, during the last few minutes, taken place in his demeanour.
From a position fronting my own, he had gradually brought round
his chair, so as to sit with his face to the door of the chamber;
The Fall of the House of Usher |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Critias by Plato: forth. But when a person endeavours to paint the human form we are quick
at finding out defects, and our familiar knowledge makes us severe judges
of any one who does not render every point of similarity. And we may
observe the same thing to happen in discourse; we are satisfied with a
picture of divine and heavenly things which has very little likeness to
them; but we are more precise in our criticism of mortal and human things.
Wherefore if at the moment of speaking I cannot suitably express my
meaning, you must excuse me, considering that to form approved likenesses
of human things is the reverse of easy. This is what I want to suggest to
you, and at the same time to beg, Socrates, that I may have not less, but
more indulgence conceded to me in what I am about to say. Which favour, if
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