| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Exiles by Honore de Balzac: his trade, affected to believe that the strange lady was in fact a
work-girl; still, this assumed indifference could not altogether cloak
the timidity of a courtier who respects a royal incognity. At this
moment six was striking by the clock of Saint-Denis du Pas, a small
church that stood between Notre-Dame and the Port-Saint-Landry--the
first church erected in Paris, on the very spot where Saint-Denis was
laid on the gridiron, as chronicles tell. The hour flew from steeple
to tower all over the city. Then suddenly confused shouts were heard
on the left bank of the Seine, behind Notre-Dame, in the quarter where
the schools of the University harbored their swarms.
At this signal, Jacqueline's elder lodger began to move about his
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: but I haven't felt as well in a dozen years. Sometimes, when I
am bored, I ring for Liddy, and we talk things over. When Warner
married Rosie, Liddy sniffed and said what I took for
faithfulness in Rosie had been nothing but mawkishness. I have
not yet outlived Liddy's contempt because I gave them silver
knives and forks as a wedding gift.
So we sit and talk, and sometimes Liddy threatens to leave, and
often I discharge her, but we stay together somehow. I am
talking of renting a house next year, and Liddy says to be sure
there is no ghost. To be perfectly frank, I never really lived
until that summer. Time has passed since I began this story.
The Circular Staircase |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The First Men In The Moon by H. G. Wells: females usually, that I am inclined to think are a sort of wife to them;
but some of the profounder scholars are altogether too great for
locomotion, and are carried from place to place in a sort of sedan tub,
wabbling jellies of knowledge that enlist my respectful astonishment. I
have just passed one in coming to this place where I am permitted to amuse
myself with these electrical toys, a vast, shaven, shaky head, bald and
thin-skinned, carried on his grotesque stretcher. In front and behind came
his bearers, and curious, almost trumpet-faced, news disseminators
shrieked his fame.
"I have already mentioned the retinues that accompany most of the
intellectuals: ushers, bearers, valets, extraneous tentacles and muscles,
The First Men In The Moon |
