| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen: from a doubt of the propriety of accepting such an offer.
"I will drive you up Lansdown Hill tomorrow."
"Thank you; but will not your horse want rest?"
"Rest! He has only come three and twenty miles today;
all nonsense; nothing ruins horses so much as rest;
nothing knocks them up so soon. No, no; I shall exercise
mine at the average of four hours every day while I
am here."
"Shall you indeed!" said Catherine very seriously.
"That will be forty miles a day."
"Forty! Aye, fifty, for what I care. Well, I will
Northanger Abbey |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde: at my boldness, and counselled me to flee from the city. I paid no
heed to them, but went and sat with the sellers of strange gods,
who by reason of their craft are abominated. When I told them what
I had done, each of them gave me a god and prayed me to leave them.
'That night, as I lay on a cushion in the tea-house that is in the
Street of Pomegranates, the guards of the Emperor entered and led
me to the palace. As I went in they closed each door behind me,
and put a chain across it. Inside was a great court with an arcade
running all round. The walls were of white alabaster, set here and
there with blue and green tiles. The pillars were of green marble,
and the pavement of a kind of peach-blossom marble. I had never
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis: it,--he would abide by it. He said that over and over again,
dulling down the death-gnawing of his outraged heart.
Miss Herne was quite contented, sitting by him, with herself, and
the admiring world. She had no notion of trial nights in life.
Not many temptations pierced through her callous, flabby
temperament to sting her to defeat or triumph. There was for her
no under-current of conflict, in these people whom she passed,
between self and the unseen power that Holmes sneered at, whose
name was love; they were nothing but movables, pleasant or ugly
to look at, well- or ill-dressed. There were no dark iron bars
across her life for her soul to clutch and shake madly,--nothing
Margret Howth: A Story of To-day |
