| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Country Doctor by Honore de Balzac: constantly watered by the mountain streams that keep it fresh and
green at all seasons of the year. Sometimes a roughly-built sawmill
appears in a picturesque position, with its stacks of long pine trunks
with the bark peeled off, and its mill stream, brought from the bed of
the torrent in great square wooden pipes, with masses of dripping
filament issuing from every crack. Little cottages, scattered here and
there, with their gardens full of blossoming fruit trees, call up the
ideas that are aroused by the sight of industrious poverty; while the
thought of ease, secured after long years of toil, is suggested by
some larger houses farther on, with their red roofs of flat round
tiles, shaped like the scales of a fish. There is no door, moreover,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Options by O. Henry: it down from dictation.
"Why didn't your father look this up?" I asked young Rundle.
"He went blind before he could do so," he replied.
"Why didn't you hunt for it yourself?" I asked.
"Well," said he, "I've only known about the paper for ten years.
First there was the spring ploughin' to do, and then choppin' the
weeds out of the corn; and then come takin' fodder; and mighty soon
winter was on us. It seemed to run along that way year after year."
That sounded perfectly reasonable to me, so I took it up with young
Lee Rundle at once.
The directions on the paper were simple. The whole burro cavalcade
Options |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Odyssey by Homer: logs of wood for a burnt offering. Tell them also to bring me
some clear spring water."
On this they hurried off on their several errands. The heifer
was brought in from the plain, and Telemachus's crew came from
the ship; the goldsmith brought the anvil, hammer, and tongs,
with which he worked his gold, and Minerva herself came to
accept the sacrifice. Nestor gave out the gold, and the smith
gilded the horns of the heifer that the goddess might have
pleasure in their beauty. Then Stratius and Echephron brought
her in by the horns; Aretus fetched water from the house in a
ewer that had a flower pattern on it, and in his other hand he
The Odyssey |
