| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Talisman by Walter Scott: forth the richest odours, hanging by silver chains from the roof
of a small Gothic chapel, hewn, like most part of the hermit's
singular mansion, out of the sound and solid rock. But whereas,
in every other place which Sir Kenneth had seen, the labour
employed upon the rock had been of the simplest and coarsest
description, it had in this chapel employed the invention and the
chisels of the most able architects. The groined roofs rose from
six columns on each side, carved with the rarest skill; and the
manner in which the crossings of the concave arches were bound
together, as it were, with appropriate ornaments, were all in the
finest tone of the architecture of the age. Corresponding to the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Gentle Grafter by O. Henry: here," says she. "You ought to be Toady Extraordinary to the Court of
St. Bridget or Head Porter of the Island of Porto Rico. I'm going to
see about it."
"'Then this lady,' I says to Andy, 'moves against the authorities at
Washington with her baggage and munitions, consisting of five dozen
indiscriminating letters written to her by a member of the Cabinet
when she was 15; a letter of introduction from King Leopold to the
Smithsonian Institution, and a pink silk costume with canary colored
spats.
"'Well and then what?' I goes. 'She has the letters printed in the
evening papers that match her costume, she lectures at an informal tea
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: "All right. Get the ladder over."
I hesitated. Should I whisper something to him? But what?
His immobility seemed to have been never disturbed.
What could I tell him he did not know already? . . . Finally
I went on deck.
II
The skipper of the Sephora had a thin red whisker all round his face,
and the sort of complexion that goes with hair of that color;
also the particular, rather smeary shade of blue in the eyes.
He was not exactly a showy figure; his shoulders were high,
his stature but middling--one leg slightly more bandy
The Secret Sharer |
