| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: tortuously up the hill to the church. Vineyards, the cottages of the
peasantry, and a small grove crowned the heights.
Rigou's house, the handsomest in the village, was built of the large
rubble-stone peculiar to Burgundy, imbedded in yellow mortar smoothed
by the trowel, which produced an uneven surface, still further broken
here and there by projecting points of the stone, which was mostly
black. A band of cement, in which no stones were allowed to show,
surrounded each window with a sort of frame, where time had made some
slight, capricious cracks, such as appear on plastered ceilings. The
outer blinds, of a clumsy pattern, were noticeable for their color,
which was dragon-green. A few mosses grew among the slates of the
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy: door of the hut, whilst one of them kept guard over Marguerite.
The door was partially open; on of the soldiers pushed it further,
but within all was darkness, the charcoal fire only lighting with a dim,
red light the furthest corner of the hut. The soldiers paused
automatically at the door, like machines waiting for further orders.
Chauvelin, who was prepared for a violent onslaught from
within, and for a vigorous resistance from the four fugitives, under
cover of the darkness, was for the moment paralyzed with astonishment
when he saw the soldiers standing there at attention, like sentries on
guard, whilst not a sound proceeded from the hut.
Filled with strange, anxious foreboding, he, too, went to the
The Scarlet Pimpernel |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: and posted up the tons of copra, and over the village green and saw
the island dandies and reckoned up the yards of print they wanted
for their kilts and dresses, I felt as if I was in the right place
to make a fortune, and go home again and start a public-house.
There was I, sitting in that verandah, in as handsome a piece of
scenery as you could find, a splendid sun, and a fine fresh healthy
trade that stirred up a man's blood like sea-bathing; and the whole
thing was clean gone from me, and I was dreaming England, which is,
after all, a nasty, cold, muddy hole, with not enough light to see
to read by; and dreaming the looks of my public, by a cant of a
broad high-road like an avenue, and with the sign on a green tree.
|
