| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: through the trellised panes, and served to render sufficiently
distinct the more prominent objects around; the eye, however,
struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or
the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies
hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse,
comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical
instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality
to the scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow.
An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and
pervaded all.
Upon my entrance, Usher rose from a sofa on which he had
The Fall of the House of Usher |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: delight in science. A good experiment would make him almost dance
with delight. In November, 1850, he wrote to me thus: --'I hope
some day to take up the point respecting the magnetism of associated
particles. In the meantime I rejoice at every addition to the facts
and reasoning connected with the subject. When science is a
republic, then it gains: and though I am no republican in other
matters, I am in that.' All his letters illustrate this catholicity
of feeling. Ten years ago, when going down to Brighton, he carried
with him a little paper I had just completed, and afterwards wrote
to me. His letter is a mere sample of the sympathy which he always
showed to me and my work.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: commonly closed the daily procession, for the old woman put on her
spectacles and took up her work with a sigh, glancing at her daughter
with so strange a look that Lavater himself would have found it
difficult to interpret. Admiration, gratitude, a sort of hope for
better days, were mingled with pride at having such a pretty daughter.
At about four in the afternoon the old lady pushed her foot against
Caroline's, and the girl looked up quickly enough to see the new
actor, whose regular advent would thenceforth lend variety to the
scene. He was tall and thin, and wore black, a man of about forty,
with a certain solemnity of demeanor; as his piercing hazel eye met
the old woman's dull gaze, he made her quake, for she felt as though
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