| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Time Machine by H. G. Wells: complete. You know I have a certain weakness for mechanism, and I
was inclined to linger among these; the more so as for the most
part they had the interest of puzzles, and I could make only the
vaguest guesses at what they were for. I fancied that if I could
solve their puzzles I should find myself in possession of powers
that might be of use against the Morlocks.
`Suddenly Weena came very close to my side. So suddenly that
she startled me. Had it not been for her I do not think I should
have noticed that the floor of the gallery sloped at all.
[Footnote: It may be, of course, that the floor did not slope,
but that the museum was built into the side of a hill.-ED.] The
The Time Machine |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Red Seal by Natalie Sumner Lincoln: envelope was wedged in such a manner that the small door would
not shut and that had prevented the closing of the outer safe door.
Kent, preparatory to shutting the safe, drew out the envelope
intending to place it in another pigeon-hole where there was more
room. As he turned the envelope over he was thunderstruck to
recognize it as the one which Helen McIntyre had placed in the safe
on Wednesday morning. He had last seen the envelope lying on the
table in the smoking porch of the Club de Vingt, from whence it
had mysteriously disappeared, and now it was back again in
Rochester's safe!
Had it ever been missing from the safe? The question forced itself
The Red Seal |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: houses of a street as still and decorous as a well-kept
alley in a cemetery, I had a vision of him on the stretcher,
opening his mouth voraciously, as if to devour all the earth
with all its mankind. He lived then before me; he lived as much
as he had ever lived--a shadow insatiable of splendid appearances,
of frightful realities; a shadow darker than the shadow of the night,
and draped nobly in the folds of a gorgeous eloquence.
The vision seemed to enter the house with me--the stretcher,
the phantom-bearers, the wild crowd of obedient worshippers,
the gloom of the forests, the glitter of the reach between
the murky bends, the beat of the drum, regular and muffled
Heart of Darkness |
