| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Kenilworth by Walter Scott: little thicket of bushes, and take heed you look neither to right
nor to left for ten minutes, or so long as you shall hear the
hammer clink, and whenever it ceases, say your prayers for the
space you could tell a hundred--or count over a hundred, which
will do as well--and then come into the circle; you will find
your money gone and your horse shod."
"My money gone to a certainty!" said Tressilian; "but as for the
rest--Hark ye, my lad, I am not your school-master, but if you
play off your waggery on me, I will take a part of his task off
his hands, and punish you to purpose."
"Ay, when you catch me!" said the boy; and presently took to his
Kenilworth |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: of the past, with the intoxication of yesterday's rapture still
upon me, I drink deep of life--a whole lifetime of pleasure and
of love!"
The woman who sat next to Juan Belvidero looked at him with a
feverish glitter in her eyes. She was silent. Then--"I should
need no hired bravo to kill my lover if he forsook me!" she cried
at last, and laughed, but the marvelously wrought gold comfit box
in her fingers was crushed by her convulsive clutch.
"When are you to be Grand Duke?" asked the sixth. There was the
frenzy of a Bacchante in her eyes, and her teeth gleamed between
the lips parted with a smile of cruel glee.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Adam Bede by George Eliot: ornaments she could imagine.
"Little, little ears!" Arthur had said, pretending to pinch them
one evening, as Hetty sat beside him on the grass without her hat.
"I wish I had some pretty ear-rings!" she said in a moment, almost
before she knew what she was saying--the wish lay so close to her
lips, it WOULD flutter past them at the slightest breath. And the
next day--it was only last week--Arthur had ridden over to
Rosseter on purpose to buy them. That little wish so naively
uttered seemed to him the prettiest bit of childishness; he had
never heard anything like it before; and he had wrapped the box up
in a great many covers, that he might see Hetty unwrapping it with
Adam Bede |
