| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy: failing of Elizabeth's was her occasional pretty and
picturesque use of dialect words--those terrible marks of
the beast to the truly genteel.
It was dinner-time--they never met except at meals--and she
happened to say when he was rising from table, wishing to
show him something, "If you'll bide where you be a minute,
father, I'll get it."
"'Bide where you be,'" he echoed sharply, "Good God, are you
only fit to carry wash to a pig-trough, that ye use such
words as those?"
She reddened with shame and sadness.
The Mayor of Casterbridge |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: the huge white flashes are,--sheet-lightning of breakers,--and
over the weird wash of corpses coming in.
It is the steam-call of the relief-boat, hastening to rescue the
living, to gather in the dead.
The tremendous tragedy is over!
Out of the Sea's Strength
I.
There are regions of Louisiana coast whose aspect seems not of
the present, but of the immemorial past--of that epoch when low
flat reaches of primordial continent first rose into form above a
Silurian Sea. To indulge this geologic dream, any fervid and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous by Oscar Wilde: I slit his throat and left him. I can bear
Dishonour, public insult, many shames,
Shrill scorn, and open contumely, but he
Who filches from me something that is mine,
Ay! though it be the meanest trencher-plate
From which I feed mine appetite--oh! he
Perils his soul and body in the theft
And dies for his small sin. From what strange clay
We men are moulded!
GUIDO. Why do you speak like this?
SIMONE. I wonder, my Lord Guido, if my sword
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