| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Passion in the Desert by Honore de Balzac: solitary trees and shuddered--they reminded him of the graceful shafts
crowned with foliage which characterize the Saracen columns in the
cathedral of Arles.
But when, after counting the palm trees, he cast his eyes around him,
the most horrible despair was infused into his soul. Before him
stretched an ocean without limit. The dark sand of the desert spread
further than eye could reach in every direction, and glittered like
steel struck with bright light. It might have been a sea of looking-
glass, or lakes melted together in a mirror. A fiery vapor carried up
in surging waves made a perpetual whirlwind over the quivering land.
The sky was lit with an Oriental splendor of insupportable purity,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft: in marble those nightmares and phantasies which Arthur Machen
evokes in prose, and Clark Ashton Smith makes visible in verse
and in painting.
Dark, frail, and somewhat unkempt in aspect,
he turned languidly at my knock and asked me my business without
rising. Then I told him who I was, he displayed some interest;
for my uncle had excited his curiosity in probing his strange
dreams, yet had never explained the reason for the study. I did
not enlarge his knowledge in this regard, but sought with some
subtlety to draw him out. In a short time I became convinced ofhis
absolute sincerity, for he spoke of the dreams in a manner none
Call of Cthulhu |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tales and Fantasies by Robert Louis Stevenson: too much; even you must allow that.'
'Meaning you didn't?' asked Alexander.
'I never robbed a soul in all my days,' cried John: 'except
my father, if you call that robbery; and I brought him back
the money in this room, and he wouldn't even take it!'
'Look here, John,' said his brother, 'let us have no
misunderstanding upon this. Macewen saw my father; he told
him a bank you had worked for in San Francisco was wiring
over the habitable globe to have you collared - that it was
supposed you had nailed thousands; and it was dead certain
you had nailed three hundred. So Macewen said, and I wish
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