| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Nada the Lily by H. Rider Haggard: second wife, Anadi, had given birth to a son. You ask, my father, how
I came to be married, seeing that Chaka forbade marriage to all his
soldiers till they were in middle life and had put the man's ring upon
their heads. It was a boon he granted me as inyanga of medicine,
saying it was well that a doctor should know the sicknesses of women
and learn how to cure their evil tempers. As though, my father, that
were possible!
When the king heard that Baleka was sick he did not kill her outright,
because he loved her a little, but he sent for me, commanding me to
attend her, and when the child was born to cause its body to be
brought to him, according to custom, so that he might be sure that it
Nada the Lily |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: "All that's been bad in me, the things I've put up with--
the second best--"
She murmured, considered her own life, but could not describe
how it looked to her now.
"And the loneliness!" he continued. A vision of walking with her
through the streets of London came before his eyes. "We will go for
walks together," he said. The simplicity of the idea relieved them,
and for the first time they laughed. They would have liked had
they dared to take each other by the hand, but the consciousness
of eyes fixed on them from behind had not yet deserted them.
"Books, people, sights--Mrs. Nutt, Greeley, Hutchinson," Hewet murmured.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Man in Lower Ten by Mary Roberts Rinehart: all night, there being nothing else to do. I suggested a game of
double-dummy bridge, but did not urge it when my companion asked me
if it resembled euchre. Gradually, as the ecclesiastical candle
paled in the firelight, we grew drowsy. I drew a divan into the
cheerful area, and stretched myself out for sleep. Hotchkiss, who
aid the pain in his leg made him wakeful, sat wide-eyed by the
fire, smoking a pipe.
I have no idea how much time had passed when something threw itself
violently on my chest. I roused with a start and leaped to my feet,
and a large Angora cat fell with a thump to the floor. The fire
was still bright, and there was an odor of scorched leather through
The Man in Lower Ten |
