| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer: with barbaric bangles and slim ankles surrounded by gold bands.
The girl was gone, even as I told myself that she was an houri,
and that I, though a Christian, had been consigned by some error
to the paradise of Mohammed.
Then--a complete blank.
My head throbbed madly; my brain seemed to be clogged--inert; and though
my first, feeble movement was followed by the rattle of a chain, some moments
more elapsed ere I realized that the chain was fastened to a steel collar--
that the steel collar was clasped about my neck.
I moaned weakly.
"Smith!" I muttered, "Where are you? Smith!"
The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: hundred hearths; and the prosperous town of Ostend was an obscure
haven, a straggling village where pirates dwelt in security among the
fishermen and the few poor merchants who lived in the place.
But though the town of Ostend consisted altogether of some score of
houses and three hundred cottages, huts or hovels built of the
driftwood of wrecked vessels, it nevertheless rejoiced in the
possession of a governor, a garrison, a forked gibbet, a convent, and
a burgomaster, in short, in all the institutions of an advanced
civilization.
Who reigned over Brabant and Flanders in those days? On this point
tradition is mute. Let us confess at once that this tale savors
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: fact, both creative and independent.
ERNEST. Independent?
GILBERT. Yes; independent. Criticism is no more to be judged by
any low standard of imitation or resemblance than is the work of
poet or sculptor. The critic occupies the same relation to the
work of art that he criticises as the artist does to the visible
world of form and colour, or the unseen world of passion and of
thought. He does not even require for the perfection of his art
the finest materials. Anything will serve his purpose. And just
as out of the sordid and sentimental amours of the silly wife of a
small country doctor in the squalid village of Yonville-l'Abbaye,
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