| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg by Mark Twain: needed it so--the money--and now you are free of Pinkerton and his
bank, and nobody's slave any more; it seems to me I could fly for
joy."
It was a happy half-hour that the couple spent there on the settee
caressing each other; it was the old days come again--days that had
begun with their courtship and lasted without a break till the
stranger brought the deadly money. By-and-by the wife said:
"Oh, Edward, how lucky it was you did him that grand service, poor
Goodson! I never liked him, but I love him now. And it was fine
and beautiful of you never to mention it or brag about it." Then,
with a touch of reproach, "But you ought to have told ME, Edward,
The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James: smoking in her face and signing or not signing. The gentlemen who
came in with him were nothing when he was there. They turned up
alone at other times--then only perhaps with a dim richness of
reference. He himself, absent as well as present, was all. He was
very tall, very fair, and had, in spite of his thick
preoccupations, a good-humour that was exquisite, particularly as
it so often had the effect of keeping him on. He could have
reached over anybody, and anybody--no matter who--would have let
him; but he was so extraordinarily kind that he quite pathetically
waited, never waggling things at her out of his turn nor saying
"Here!" with horrid sharpness. He waited for pottering old ladies,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte: would have scorned to do it, if she had been spitted on the horns
of a mad cow. I did, though: I vociferated curses enough to
annihilate any fiend in Christendom; and I got a stone and thrust
it between his jaws, and tried with all my might to cram it down
his throat. A beast of a servant came up with a lantern, at last,
shouting - "Keep fast, Skulker, keep fast!" He changed his note,
however, when he saw Skulker's game. The dog was throttled off;
his huge, purple tongue hanging half a foot out of his mouth, and
his pendent lips streaming with bloody slaver. The man took Cathy
up; she was sick: not from fear, I'm certain, but from pain. He
carried her in; I followed, grumbling execrations and vengeance.
Wuthering Heights |
