| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: "what does money matter? Love is more than money."
"Mr. Isaacs has advanced us fifty pounds to pay off our debts and to get
a proper outfit for James. You must not forget that, Sibyl. Fifty pounds
is a very large sum. Mr. Isaacs has been most considerate."
"He is not a gentleman, Mother, and I hate the way he talks to me,"
said the girl, rising to her feet and going over to the window.
"I don't know how we could manage without him," answered the elder
woman querulously.
Sibyl Vane tossed her head and laughed. "We don't want him
any more, Mother. Prince Charming rules life for us now."
Then she paused. A rose shook in her blood and shadowed
The Picture of Dorian Gray |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: MY DEAR WEG, - I received your book last night as I lay abed with a
pleurisy, the result, I fear, of overwork, gradual decline of
appetite, etc. You know what a wooden-hearted curmudgeon I am
about contemporary verse. I like none of it, except some of my
own. (I look back on that sentence with pleasure; it comes from an
honest heart.) Hence you will be kind enough to take this from me
in a kindly spirit; the piece 'To my daughter' is delicious. And
yet even here I am going to pick holes. I am a BEASTLY curmudgeon.
It is the last verse. 'Newly budded' is off the venue; and haven't
you gone ahead to make a poetry daybreak instead of sticking to
your muttons, and comparing with the mysterious light of stars the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: a batrachomyomachy--"
"Confound you, and your long words, sir," said poor Will, "I know
you are flouting me."
"Pazienza, Signor Cavaliere; that which is to come is no flouting,
but bloody and warlike earnest. For afterwards all the young
gentlemen shall adjourn into a convenient field, sand, or bog--
which last will be better, as no man will be able to run away, if
he be up to his knees in soft peat: and there stripping to our
shirts, with rapiers of equal length and keenest temper, each shall
slay his man, catch who catch can, and the conquerors fight again,
like a most valiant main of gamecocks as we are, till all be dead,
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