| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: head of the West Bow. Some are crowded to the doors;
some are empty like monuments; and yet you will ever find
new ones in the building. Hence that surprising clamour
of church bells that suddenly breaks out upon the Sabbath
morning from Trinity and the sea-skirts to Morningside on
the borders of the hills. I have heard the chimes of
Oxford playing their symphony in a golden autumn morning,
and beautiful it was to hear. But in Edinburgh all
manner of loud bells join, or rather disjoin, in one
swelling, brutal babblement of noise. Now one overtakes
another, and now lags behind it; now five or six all
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Bucolics by Virgil: Each against each in turn? Lest you be loth,
I pledge this heifer; every day she comes
Twice to the milking-pail, and feeds withal
Two young ones at her udder: say you now
What you will stake upon the match with me.
MENALCAS
Naught from the flock I'll venture, for at home
I have a father and a step-dame harsh,
And twice a day both reckon up the flock,
And one withal the kids. But I will stake,
Seeing you are so mad, what you yourself
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne: way by losing myself in the midst of geological contemplations. The
temperature remained what it had been during our passage through the
lava and schists. Only my sense of smell was forcibly affected by an
odour of protocarburet of hydrogen. I immediately recognised in this
gallery the presence of a considerable quantity of the dangerous gas
called by miners firedamp, the explosion of which has often
occasioned such dreadful catastrophes.
Happily, our light was from Ruhmkorff's ingenious apparatus. If
unfortunately we had explored this gallery with torches, a terrible
explosion would have put an end to travelling and travellers at one
stroke.
Journey to the Center of the Earth |
