| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard: I think the one, sometimes the other. In some branches of art
they have attained the very highest proficiency. Take for instance
their buildings and their statuary. I do not think that the
latter can be equalled either in beauty or imaginative power
anywhere in the world, and as for the former it may have been
rivalled in ancient Egypt, but I am sure that it has never been
since. But, on the other hand, they are totally ignorant of
many other arts. Till Sir Henry, who happened to know something
about it, showed them how to do it by mixing silica and lime,
they could not make a piece of glass, and their crockery is rather
primitive. A water-clock is their nearest approach to a watch;
Allan Quatermain |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Thuvia, Maid of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: a warrior's metal at the end of the apartment behind her.
Ah, if she had but an instant more of time she could
have reached that screening arras and, perchance,
have found some avenue of escape behind it; but now
it was too late--she had been discovered!
With a feeling that was akin to apathy she turned to
meet her fate, and there, before her, running swiftly
across the broad chamber to her side, was Carthoris, his
naked long-sword gleaming in his hand.
For days she had doubted his intentions of the Heliumite.
She had thought him a party to her abduction. Since Fate
Thuvia, Maid of Mars |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton: at Ramy; but he was looking at the sausages that Linda had just put
on the table.
When dinner was over Mrs. Hochmuller invited her guests to
step out of the kitchen-door, and they found themselves in a green
enclosure, half garden, half orchard. Grey hens followed by golden
broods clucked under the twisted apple-boughs, a cat dozed on the
edge of an old well, and from tree to tree ran the network of
clothes-line that denoted Mrs. Hochmuller's calling. Beyond the
apple trees stood a yellow summer-house festooned with scarlet
runners; and below it, on the farther side of a rough fence, the
land dipped down, holding a bit of woodland in its hollow. It was
|
