| 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: been lying at full length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth
which had much in it, I at first thought, of an overdone
cordiality--of the constrained effort of the ennuye man of
the world. A glance, however, at his countenance, convinced me
of his perfect sincerity. We sat down; and for some moments,
while he spoke not, I gazed upon him with a feeling half of pity,
half of awe. Surely, man had never before so terribly altered,
in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher! It was with
difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of the
wan being before me with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet
the character of his face had been at all times remarkable. A
The Fall of the House of Usher |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin: that of the body. Every one knows how immoderately children laugh,
and how their whole bodies are convulsed when they are tickled.
The anthropoid apes, as we have seen, likewise utter a reiterated sound,
corresponding with our laughter, when they are tickled, especially under
the armpits. I touched with a bit of paper the sole of the foot of one
of my infants, when only seven days old, and it was suddenly jerked
away and the toes curled about, as in an older child. Such movements,
as well as laughter from being tickled, are manifestly reflex actions;
and this is likewise shown by the minute unstriped muscles, which serve
to erect the separate hairs on the body, contracting near a tickled
surface.[6] Yet laughter from a ludicrous idea, though involuntary,
Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: laughter, the smell of crushed grass were somehow inside her. She had no
room for anything else. How strange! She looked up at the pale sky, and
all she thought was, "Yes, it was the most successful party."
Now the broad road was crossed. The lane began, smoky and dark. Women in
shawls and men's tweed caps hurried by. Men hung over the palings; the
children played in the doorways. A low hum came from the mean little
cottages. In some of them there was a flicker of light, and a shadow,
crab-like, moved across the window. Laura bent her head and hurried on.
She wished now she had put on a coat. How her frock shone! And the big
hat with the velvet streamer--if only it was another hat! Were the people
looking at her? They must be. It was a mistake to have come; she knew all
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