| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: of voices--the shouting of the dead!
"It is my purpose to make thee happy for ever," she said. "Thou art my
son."
We were sitting before the hearth, the ashes lay cold upon it; the old
shrunken woman grasped my hand so tightly in hers that I could not
choose but stay. I looked fixedly at her, striving to read the story
of her life from the things among which she was crouching. Had she
indeed any life in her? It was a mystery. Yet I saw plainly that once
she must have been young and beautiful; fair, with all the charm of
simplicity, perfect as some Greek statue, with the brow of a vestal.
"Ah! ah!" I cried, "now I know thee! Miserable woman, why hast thou
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: traveller;" whereof these gave notice to a custom-house officer,
by whom I was examined very strictly upon my landing. This
officer spoke to me in the language of Balnibarbi, which, by the
force of much commerce, is generally understood in that town,
especially by seamen and those employed in the customs. I gave
him a short account of some particulars, and made my story as
plausible and consistent as I could; but I thought it necessary
to disguise my country, and call myself a Hollander; because my
intentions were for Japan, and I knew the Dutch were the only
Europeans permitted to enter into that kingdom. I therefore told
the officer, "that having been shipwrecked on the coast of
Gulliver's Travels |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: guessed what never once occurred to me before our marriage--
that you were in love, and are in love, with Jude Fawley!"
"You may go on guessing that I am, since you have begun.
But do you suppose that if I had been I should have asked you
to let me go and live with him?"
The ringing of the school bell saved Phillotson from the necessity
of replying at present to what apparently did not strike him
as being such a convincing ARGUMENTUM AD VERECUNDIAM as she,
in her loss of courage at the last moment, meant it to appear.
She was beginning to be so puzzling and unstateable that he was ready
to throw in with her other little peculiarities the extremest request
Jude the Obscure |
