| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: common people regarded it with a mixture of respect and
superstition, partly out of sympathy for the fate of its ill-
starred namesake, and partly from the tales of strange sights,
and doleful lamentations, told concerning it.
As Ichabod approached this fearful tree, he began to
whistle; he thought his whistle was answered; it was but a blast
sweeping sharply through the dry branches. As he approached a
little nearer, he thought he saw something white, hanging in the
midst of the tree: he paused, and ceased whistling but, on
looking more narrowly, perceived that it was a place where the
tree had been scathed by lightning, and the white wood laid bare.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer: expression of incredulity and curiosity was singular to behold.
"The pumping of my blood," continued West, "seemed to be
bursting my body; the room kept expanding and contracting.
One time the ceiling would be pressing down on my head,
and the Chinamen--sometimes I thought there were two of them,
sometimes twenty--became dwarfs; the next instant it shot up
like the roof of a cathedral.
"`Can I be awake,' I whispered, `or am I dreaming?'
"My whisper went sweeping in windy echoes about the walls,
and was lost in the shadowy distances up under the invisible roof.
"`You are dreaming--yes.' It was the Chinaman with the green
The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: own health.
The cloudy skies and humid atmosphere of Flanders, and the shadows
produced by the narrowness of the street, sometimes diminished the
brilliancy which the old house derived from its cleanliness; moreover,
the very care bestowed upon it made it rather sad and chilling to the
eye. A poet might have wished some leafage about the shrine, a little
moss in the crevices of the freestone, a break in the even courses of
the brick; he would have longed for a swallow to build her nest in the
red coping that roofed the arches of the windows. The precise and
immaculate air of this facade, a little worn by perpetual rubbing,
gave the house a tone of severe propriety and estimable decency which
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