| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: of blossom for his beloved. A few tall trees shaded it, and round
bushes with wax-like flowers mobbed their heads together in a row.
A garden smoothly laid with turf, divided by thick hedges, with raised
beds of bright flowers, such as we keep within walls in England,
would have been out of place upon the side of this bare hill.
There was no ugliness to shut out, and the villa looked straight
across the shoulder of a slope, ribbed with olive trees, to the sea.
The indecency of the whole place struck Mrs. Chailey forcibly.
There were no blinds to shut out the sun, nor was there any furniture
to speak of for the sun to spoil. Standing in the bare stone hall,
and surveying a staircase of superb breadth, but cracked and carpetless,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Rescue by Joseph Conrad: whole place to the ground and drive every soul of them into the
bush. He could! And there was a surprise, a shock, a vague horror
at the thought of the destructive power of his will. He could
give her ever so many lives. He had seen her yesterday, and it
seemed to him he had been all his life waiting for her to make a
sign. She was very still. He pondered a plan of attack. He saw
smoke and flame--and next moment he saw himself alone amongst
shapeless ruins with the whispers, with the sigh and moan of the
Shallows in his ears. He shuddered, and shaking his hand:
"No! I cannot give you all those lives!" he cried.
Then, before Mrs. Travers could guess the meaning of this
 The Rescue |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Fisherman's Luck by Henry van Dyke: Norwegian meadows and mountain-slopes yielded to our idleness in the
summer of 1888.
II
The rural landscape of Norway, on the long easterly slope that leads
up to the watershed among the mountains of the western coast, is not
unlike that of Vermont or New Hampshire. The railway from
Christiania to the Randsfjord carried us through a hilly country of
scattered farms and villages. Wood played a prominent part in the
scenery. There were dark stretches of forest on the hilltops and in
the valleys; rivers filled with floating logs; sawmills beside the
waterfalls; wooden farmhouses painted white; and rail-fences around
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