| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: it was as if his bright ghost had returned to earth to tell me
that he regarded the affair as his own no less than mine and
that we should see it fraternally, cheerfully to a conclusion.
It was as if he had said, "Poor dear, be easy with her;
she has some natural prejudices; only give her time.
Strange as it may appear to you she was very attractive in 1820.
Meanwhile are we not in Venice together, and what better
place is there for the meeting of dear friends?
See how it glows with the advancing summer; how the sky
and the sea and the rosy air and the marble of the palaces
all shimmer and melt together." My eccentric private errand
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The First Men In The Moon by H. G. Wells: may think we are new animals, a new sort of mooncalf perhaps! It is most
important that we should show an intelligent interest from the outset."
He began to shake his head violently. "No, no," he said, "me not come on
one minute. Me look at 'im."
" Isn't there some geometrical point you might bring in apropos of that
affair? " I suggested, as the Selenites conferred again.
"Possibly a parabolic -" be began.
He yelled loudly, and leaped six feet or more!
One of the four armed moon-men had pricked him with a goad!
I turned on the goad-bearer behind me with a swift threatening gesture,
and he started back. This and Cavor's sudden shout and leap clearly
The First Men In The Moon |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: though he had barely reached middle age. There was something
severe in his aspect, and a rigidity throughout his person,
characteristics that caused him generally to be taken for a
school-master, which vocation, in fact, he had formerly exercised
for several years. The woman, Martha Pierson, was somewhat above
thirty, thin and pale, as a Shaker sister almost invariably is,
and not entirely free from that corpse-like appearance which the
garb of the sisterhood is so well calculated to impart.
"This pair are still in the summer of their years," observed the
elder from Harvard, a shrewd old man. "I would like better to see
the hoar-frost of autumn on their heads. Methinks, also, they
Twice Told Tales |
