| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad: "I did not know," she whispered.
"Good God!" he cried. "Why do you imagine I married you?"
The indelicacy of his obtuseness angered her.
"Ah--why?" she said through her teeth.
He appeared overcome with horror, and watched her lips intently as
though in fear.
"I imagined many things," she said, slowly, and paused. He watched,
holding his breath. At last she went on musingly, as if thinking
aloud, "I tried to understand. I tried honestly. . . . Why? . . . To
do the usual thing--I suppose. . . . To please yourself."
He walked away smartly, and when he came back, close to her, he had a
Tales of Unrest |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Eve and David by Honore de Balzac: man of remarkable good looks, though they could scarcely equal yours.
. . . Baron Goertz discerned intelligence in the young man (just as I
see poetry on your brow); he took him into his traveling carriage, as
I shall take you very shortly; and of a boy condemned to spend his
days in burnishing spoons and forks and making trinkets in some little
town like Angouleme, he made a favorite, as you shall be mine.
"Arrived at Stockholm, he installed his secretary and overwhelmed him
with work. The young man spent his nights in writing, and, like all
great workers, he contracted a bad habit, a trick--he took to chewing
paper. The late M. de Malesherbes use to rap people over the knuckles;
and he did this once, by the by, to somebody or other whose suit
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James: as specific remembrance that it was regarded in that region, in
August and September, as rather pleasant just to be caught for
something or other in passing through town. Somebody was always
passing and somebody might catch somebody else. It was in full
cognisance of this subtle law that she adhered to the most
ridiculous circuit she could have made to get home. One warm dull
featureless Friday, when an accident had made her start from
Cocker's a little later than usual, she became aware that something
of which the infinite possibilities had for so long peopled her
dreams was at last prodigiously upon her, though the perfection in
which the conditions happened to present it was almost rich enough
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