| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn: But I cannot help feeling some pity for you, -- because you are so young...
You are a pretty boy, Minokichi; and I will not hurt you now. But, if you
ever tell anybody -- even your own mother -- about what you have seen this
night, I shall know it; and then I will kill you... Remember what I say!"
With these words, she turned from him, and passed through the doorway.
Then he found himself able to move; and he sprang up, and looked out. But
the woman was nowhere to be seen; and the snow was driving furiously into
the hut. Minokichi closed the door, and secured it by fixing several
billets of wood against it. He wondered if the wind had blown it open;-- he
thought that he might have been only dreaming, and might have mistaken the
gleam of the snow-light in the doorway for the figure of a white woman: but
Kwaidan |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Chronicles of the Canongate by Walter Scott: Whether she looked to any farther probable consequences of her
unhappy scheme cannot be known; but the partner of MacTavish
Mhor, in all his perils and wanderings, was familiar with an
hundred instances of resistance or escape, by which one brave
man, amidst a land of rocks, lakes, and mountains, dangerous
passes, and dark forests, might baffle the pursuit of hundreds.
For the future, therefore, she feared nothing; her sole
engrossing object was to prevent her son from keeping his word
with his commanding officer.
With this secret purpose, she evaded the proposal which Hamish
repeatedly made, that they should set out together to take
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Prince of Bohemia by Honore de Balzac: of a cross, and that it could only be seen in southern latitudes.
" 'Very well, Charles, let us go,' said she.
"La Palferine, ferocious though he was, had tears in his eyes; but
what a look there was in Claudine's face, what a note in her voice! I
have seen nothing like the thing that followed, not even in the
supreme touch of a great actor's art; nothing to compare with her
movement when she saw the hard eyes softened in tears; Claudine sank
upon her knees and kissed La Palferine's pitiless hand. He raised her
with his grand manner, his 'Rusticoli air,' as he calls it--'There,
child!' he said, 'I will do something for you; I will put you--in my
will.'
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