| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: She was the daughter of a clergyman in reduced circumstances,
and at his death, which had occurred several years before this date,
she boldly avoided penury by taking over a little shop of church
requisites and developing it to its present creditable proportions.
She wore a cross and beads round her neck as her only ornament, and knew
the Christian Year by heart.
She now came to call Sue to tea, and, finding that the girl did not respond
for a moment, entered the room just as the other was hastily putting a string
round each parcel.
"Something you have been buying, Miss Bridehead?" she asked,
regarding the enwrapped objects.
Jude the Obscure |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tales and Fantasies by Robert Louis Stevenson: it was personal; it was a little more than half unfair, and
about a quarter untrue. The old man did not mean to say what
was untrue, you may be sure; but he had rashly picked up
gossip, as his prejudice suggested, and now rashly launched
it on the public with the sanction of his name.
'The Liberal candidate,' he concluded, 'is thus a public
turncoat. Is that the sort of man we want? He has been
given the lie, and has swallowed the insult. Is that the
sort of man we want? I answer No! With all the force of my
conviction, I answer, NO!'
And then he signed and dated the letter with an amateur's
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton: to meet him. His expression was kind, but she shrank from
his peculiar dress, and from his pale face with its bluish chin and
enigmatic smile. Ann Eliza remained in the shop. Miss Mellins's
girl had mixed the buttons again and she set herself to sort them.
The priest stayed a long time with Evelina. When he again carried
his enigmatic smile past the counter, and Ann Eliza rejoined her
sister, Evelina was smiling with something of the same mystery; but
she did not tell her secret.
After that it seemed to Ann Eliza that the shop and the back
room no longer belonged to her. It was as though she were there on
sufferance, indulgently tolerated by the unseen power which hovered
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