| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Master of the World by Jules Verne: marvelous transformations. The same engine drove it along all its
courses! And I had been a witness of its metamorphoses! But that of
which I was still ignorant, and which I could perhaps discover, was
the source of the energy which drove the machine, and above all, who
was the inspired inventor who, after having created it, in every
detail, guided it with so much ability and audacity!
At the moment when the "Terror" rose above the Canadian Falls, I was
held down against the hatchway of my cabin. The clear, moonlit
evening had permitted me to note the direction taken by the air-ship.
It followed the course of the river and passed the Suspension Bridge
three miles below the falls. It is here that the irresistible rapids
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: Picture to yourself a plaster mask of Dante in the red lamplight, with
a forest of silver-white hair above the brows. Blindness intensified
the expression of bitterness and sorrow in that grand face of his; the
dead eyes were lighted up, as it were, by a thought within that broke
forth like a burning flame, lit by one sole insatiable desire, written
large in vigorous characters upon an arching brow scored across with
as many lines as an old stone wall.
The old man was playing at random, without the slightest regard for
time or tune. His fingers traveled mechanically over the worn keys of
his instrument; he did not trouble himself over a false note now and
again (a /canard/, in the language of the orchestra), neither did the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Confessio Amantis by John Gower: The which fortune hath upon honde;
For how that evere it after stonde,
Thei schope among hem such a wyle,
The king was ded withinne a whyle.
So slihly cam it noght aboute
That thei ne ben descoevered oute, 2630
So that it thoghte hem for the beste
To fle, for there was no reste:
And thus the tresor of the king
Thei trusse and mochel other thing,
And with a certein felaschipe
Confessio Amantis |
