| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Time Machine by H. G. Wells: save for a general impression of automatic organization, I fear I
can convey very little of the difference to your mind.
`In the matter of sepulchre, for instance, I could see no
signs of crematoria nor anything suggestive of tombs. But it
occurred to me that, possibly, there might be cemeteries (or
crematoria) somewhere beyond the range of my explorings. This,
again, was a question I deliberately put to myself, and my
curiosity was at first entirely defeated upon the point. The
thing puzzled me, and I was led to make a further remark, which
puzzled me still more: that aged and infirm among this people
there were none.
The Time Machine |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton: be crushing him down like his own grave-stone; in all
the wide future he saw nothing that would ever lift that
load from his heart. He did not move from his place, or
raise his head from his hands; his hidden eyeballs went
on staring into utter darkness.
"At least I loved you--" he brought out.
On the other side of the hearth, from the sofa-corner
where he supposed that she still crouched, he heard a
faint stifled crying like a child's. He started up and
came to her side.
"Ellen! What madness! Why are you crying? Nothing's
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Spirit of the Border by Zane Grey: brook entered. The water was brown as it took the leap, light green when it
thinned out; and below, as it dashed on the stones, it became a beautiful,
sheeny white.
Upon a flat rock, so near the cascade that spray flew over him, sat another
hunter. The roaring falls drowned all other sounds, yet the man roused from
his dreamy contemplation of the waterfall when Joe rounded the corner.
"I heerd four shots," he said, as Joe came up.
"Yes; I got a squirrel for every shot."
Wetzel led the way along a narrow foot trail which gradually wound toward the
top of the ravine. This path emerged presently, some distance above the falls,
on the brink of a bluff. It ran along the edge of the precipice a few yards,
The Spirit of the Border |
