| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy: stood motionless for one second--then fell heavily to the
floor.
Almost at the instant of her fall the rude music of the
skimmington ceased. The roars of sarcastic laughter went
off in ripples, and the trampling died out like the rustle
of a spent wind. Elizabeth was only indirectly conscious of
this; she had rung the bell, and was bending over Lucetta,
who remained convulsed on the carpet in the paroxysms of an
epileptic seizure. She rang again and again, in vain; the
probability being that the servants had all run out of the
house to see more of the Daemonic Sabbath than they could
The Mayor of Casterbridge |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: among his books and music, the correspondent of Sir Isaac
Newton, and, in one instance at least the poetical counsellor
of Dryden. Through all this period, that Diary which
contained the secret memoirs of his life, with all its
inconsistencies and escapades, had been religiously
preserved; nor, when he came to die, does he appear to have
provided for its destruction. So we may conceive him
faithful to the end to all his dear and early memories; still
mindful of Mrs. Hely in the woods at Epsom; still lighting at
Islington for a cup of kindness to the dead; still, if he
heard again that air that once so much disturbed him,
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: "Of course there is always a great deal of poor work: the rarer
things want that soil to grow in."
"Oh dear," said Dorothea, taking up that thought into the chief current
of her anxiety; "I see it must be very difficult to do anything good.
I have often felt since I have been in Rome that most of our
lives would look much uglier and more bungling than the pictures,
if they could be put on the wall."
Dorothea parted her lips again as if she were going to say more,
but changed her mind and paused.
"You are too young--it is an anachronism for you to have such thoughts,"
said Will, energetically, with a quick shake of the head habitual to him.
Middlemarch |
