| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy: group of people on the steps and outside that was much
larger than usual; for it seemed that the old furmity dealer
had mysteriously hinted to the denizens of the lane in which
she had been lodging since her arrival, that she knew a
queer thing or two about their great local man Mr. Henchard,
if she chose to tell it. This had brought them hither.
"Why are there so many idlers round the Town Hall to-day?"
said Lucetta to her servant when the case was over. She had
risen late, and had just looked out of the window.
"Oh, please, ma'am, 'tis this larry about Mr. Henchard. A
woman has proved that before he became a gentleman he sold
The Mayor of Casterbridge |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: the pure-hearted and far from malicious Márya
Alexandróvna Schmidt.
This sort of intrusion into my father's work as an author
bore, in the "friend's" language, the modest title of "corrections
beforehand," and there is no doubt that Márya
Alexandróvna was right, for no one will ever know where what
my father wrote ends and where his concessions to Mr. ----'s
persistent "corrections beforehand" begin, all the more as this
careful adviser had the forethought to arrange that when my father
answered his letters he was always to return him the letters they
were answers to.¹
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: Midnight . . . the last of shattering bell-notes falls.
A rush of silence whirls over the cloud-high towers,
A vortex of soundless hours.
'The bells have just struck twelve: I should be sleeping.
But I cannot delay any longer to write and tell you.
The woman is dead.
She died--you know the way. Just as we planned.
Smiling, with open sunlit eyes.
Smiling upon the outstretched fatal hand . . .'
He folds his letter, steps softly down the stairs.
The doors are closed and silent. A gas-jet flares.
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