| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory
nerve which rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with
the exception of certain effects of stringed instruments. It
was, perhaps, the narrow limits to which he thus confined himself
upon the guitar, which gave birth, in great measure, to the
fantastic character of the performances. But the fervid
facility of his impromptus could not be so accounted for.
They must have been, and were, in the notes, as well as in the
words of his wild fantasias (for he not unfrequently accompanied
himself with rhymed verbal improvisations), the result of that
intense mental collectedness and concentration to which I have
The Fall of the House of Usher |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Miracle Mongers and Their Methods by Harry Houdini: As his biographer I regret to be obliged to
chronicle the fact that he made and sold an
alleged specific for the White Plague, thus
enabling his detractors to couple with his name
the word Quack. The following article, which
appeared in the New York Herald of September
1st, 1859, three days after Chabert's death,
gives further details of his activities in this
country:
We published among the obituary
notices in yesterday's Herald the death of
Miracle Mongers and Their Methods |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson: with the hot coffee, of which there may have been near upon a
quart.
'Have you no milk?' I inquired.
'I fear, madam, that milk has been omitted,' returned the
prince.
'Salt, then,' said I; 'salt is a revulsive. Pass the salt.'
'And possibly the mustard?' asked his highness, as he offered
me the contents of the various salt-cellars poured together
on a plate.
'Ah,' cried I, 'the thought is excellent! Mix me about half
a pint of mustard, drinkably dilute.'
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