| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mountains by Stewart Edward White: slits between them, and through the slits thread in and
out long strips of bacon. Cut other little gashes, and
fill these gashes with onions chopped very fine.
Suspend the ribs across two stones between which
you have allowed a fire to die down to coals.
There remain now the hams, shoulders, and heart.
The two former furnish steaks. The latter you will
make into a "bouillon." Here inserts itself quite
naturally the philosophy of boiling meat. It may be
stated in a paragraph.
If you want boiled meat, put it in hot water. That
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of
extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of
instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might
have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending
from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the
wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen
waters of the tarn.
Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the
house. A servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the
Gothic archway of the hall. A valet, of stealthy step, thence
conducted me, in silence, through many dark and intricate
The Fall of the House of Usher |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac: she had brought on Madame Granson, and for the hastened death of her
uncle. Obedient to that religion which commands us to kiss the rod
with which the punishment is inflicted, she praised her husband, and
publicly approved him. But in the confessional, or at night, when
praying, she wept often, imploring God's forgiveness for the apostasy
of the man who thought the contrary of what he professed, and who
desired the destruction of the aristocracy and the Church,--the two
religions of the house of Cormon.
With all her feelings bruised and immolated within her, compelled by
duty to make her husband happy, attached to him by a certain
indefinable affection, born, perhaps, of habit, her life became one
|
