| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Last War: A World Set Free by H. G. Wells: The king broke into a cold perspiration. Then Pestovitch
answered: 'Only a poor farmer loading hay,' he said, and picked
up a huge hay fork and went forward softly.
'You load your hay at a very bad time and in a very bad light,'
said the man at the door, peering in. 'Have you no electric
light here?'
Then suddenly he turned on an electric torch, and as he did so
Pestovitch sprang forward. 'Get out of my barn!' he cried, and
drove the fork full at the intruder's chest. He had a vague idea
that so he might stab the man to silence. But the man shouted
loudly as the prongs pierced him and drove him backward, and
The Last War: A World Set Free |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across again,
a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to play--
I tell you, Dorian, that it is on things like these that our lives depend.
Browning writes about that somewhere; but our own senses will imagine
them for us. There are moments when the odour of lilas blanc passes
suddenly across me, and I have to live the strangest month of my life
over again. I wish I could change places with you, Dorian. The world
has cried out against us both, but it has always worshipped you.
It always will worship you. You are the type of what the age
is searching for, and what it is afraid it has found. I am
so glad that you have never done anything, never carved a statue,
The Picture of Dorian Gray |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Juana by Honore de Balzac: Marana's hand, and he knew her well. With one bound he sprang from the
room, crying out in a thundering voice,--
"Help! help! they are murdering a Frenchman. Soldiers of the 6th of
the line, rush for Captain Diard! Help, help!"
Perez had gripped the man and was trying to gag him with his large
hand, but the Marana stopped him, saying,--
"Bind him fast, but let him shout. Open the doors, leave them open,
and go, go, as I told you; go, all of you.--As for you," she said,
addressing Montefiore, "shout, call for help if you choose; by the
time your soldiers get here this blade will be in your heart. Are you
married? Answer."
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