| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: It seemed to me from one moment to another that I could
not wait longer--that I really must take a sounding.
So I went on: "In general before I go to sleep--very often in bed
(it's a bad habit, but I confess to it), I read some great poet.
In nine cases out of ten it's a volume of Jeffrey Aspern."
I watched her well as I pronounced that name but I saw nothing wonderful.
Why should I indeed--was not Jeffrey Aspern the property of the human race?
"Oh, we read him--we HAVE read him," she quietly replied.
"He is my poet of poets--I know him almost by heart."
For an instant Miss Tita hesitated; then her sociability was
too much for her.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce: to be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at
the center of the bridge; they merely blockaded the two ends
of the foot planking that traversed it.
Beyond one of the sentinels nobody was in sight; the railroad
ran straight away into a forest for a hundred yards, then,
curving, was lost to view. Doubtless there was an outpost
farther along. The other bank of the stream was open ground
-- a gentle slope topped with a stockade of vertical tree
trunks, loopholed for rifles, with a single embrasure
through which protruded the muzzle of a brass cannon
commanding the bridge. Midway up the slope between the
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: My companion assured me that they were the work of the
Indians in the old time. The heaps were similar, but on
a much smaller scale, to those so commonly found on the
mountains of Wales. The desire to signalize any event, on
the highest point of the neighbouring land, seems an universal
passion with mankind. At the present day, not a
single Indian, either civilized or wild, exists in this part
of the province; nor am I aware that the former inhabitants
have left behind them any more permanent records than
these insignificant piles on the summit of the Sierra de las
Animas.
The Voyage of the Beagle |
