| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: Amid such fleeting emotions nothing so resembles love as the young
passion of an artist who tastes the first delicious anguish of his
destined fame and woe,--a passion daring yet timid, full of vague
confidence and sure discouragement. Is there a man, slender in
fortune, rich in his spring-time of genius, whose heart has not beaten
loudly as he approached a master of his art? If there be, that man
will forever lack some heart-string, some touch, I know not what, of
his brush, some fibre in his creations, some sentiment in his poetry.
When braggarts, self-satisfied and in love with themselves, step early
into the fame which belongs rightly to their future achievements, they
are men of genius only in the eyes of fools. If talent is to be
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: somebody in the house asked the servant that had showed him upstairs
what was become of him. She started. 'Alas l' says she, 'I never
thought more of him. He bade me carry him some warm ale, but I
forgot.' Upon which, not the maid, but some other person was sent up
to see after him, who, coming into the room, found him stark dead and
almost cold, stretched out across the bed. His clothes were pulled off,
his jaw fallen, his eyes open in a most frightful posture, the rug of the
bed being grasped hard in one of his hands, so that it was plain he
died soon after the maid left him; and 'tis probable, had she gone up
with the ale, she had found him dead in a few minutes after he sat
down upon the bed. The alarm was great in the house, as anyone may
A Journal of the Plague Year |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard: such as stones or paddles, we commenced a war upon the monsters
-- whose numbers were increasing by leaps and bounds, and whose
stench was overpowering. So fast as we cracked their armour
others seized the injured ones and devoured them, foaming at
the mouth, and screaming as they did so. Nor did the brutes
stop at that. When they could they nipped hold of us -- and
awful nips they were -- or tried to steal the meat. One enormous
fellow got hold of the swan we had skinned and began to drag
it off. Instantly a score of others flung themselves upon the
prey, and then began a ghastly and disgusting scene. How the
monsters foamed and screamed, and rent the flesh, and each other!
Allan Quatermain |
