| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: "It was morning when I awoke, and my first care was to visit the fire.
I uncovered it, and a gentle breeze quickly fanned it into a flame.
I observed this also and contrived a fan of branches, which roused
the embers when they were nearly extinguished. When night came
again I found, with pleasure, that the fire gave light as well
as heat and that the discovery of this element was useful to me
in my food, for I found some of the offals that the travellers
had left had been roasted, and tasted much more savoury than
the berries I gathered from the trees. I tried, therefore,
to dress my food in the same manner, placing it on the live embers.
I found that the berries were spoiled by this operation, and the
Frankenstein |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: And we must rise and go.
Soon are eyes tired with sunshine; soon the ears
Weary of utterance, seeing all is said;
Soon, racked by hopes and fears,
The all-pondering, all-contriving head,
Weary with all things, wearies of the years;
And our sad spirits turn toward the dead;
And the tired child, the body, longs for bed.
TO CHARLES BAXTER
ON THE DEATH OF THEIR COMMON FRIEND, MR. JOHN ADAM, CLERK OF COURT.
OUR Johnie's deid. The mair's the pity!
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Simple Soul by Gustave Flaubert: home, but had left again. Then she waited at the inn, thinking that
strangers might bring her a letter. At last, at daylight she took the
diligence for Lisieux.
The convent was at the end of a steep and narrow street. When she
arrived about at the middle of it, she heard strange noises, a funeral
knell. "It must be for some one else," thought she; and she pulled the
knocker violently.
After several minutes had elapsed, she heard footsteps, the door was
half opened and a nun appeared. The good sister, with an air of
compunction, told her that "she had just passed away." And at the same
time the tolling of Saint-Leonard's increased.
A Simple Soul |
