| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis: "I can stay," she said, at last. "It's his watch at the mill
to-night."
"Whose watch?" demanded Joel.
Her face brightened.
"Father's. He's back, mum."
Joel caught himself in a whistle.
"He's very stiddy, Joel,--as stiddy as yoh."
"I am very glad he has come back, Lois," said Mrs. Howth,
gravely.
At every place where Lois had been that day she had told her bit
of good news, and at every place it had been met with the same
Margret Howth: A Story of To-day |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne: On silence being restored, the triumphant orator contented himself
with adding the following remarks:
"Gentlemen, you will observe that I have but slightly touched
upon this great question. There is another altogether different
line of argument in favor of the habitability of the stars,
which I omit for the present. I only desire to call attention
to one point. To those who maintain that the planets are _not_
inhabited one may reply: You might be perfectly in the right,
if you could only show that the earth is the best possible
world, in spite of what Voltaire has said. She has but _one_
satellite, while Jupiter, Uranus, Saturn, Neptune have each
From the Earth to the Moon |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: dawn, the modest castle where her careless childhood had glided on;
there were the verdant lawns, the rippling brook, the little chamber,
the scenes of her happy play. She saw herself gathering flowers and
planting them, unknowing why they wilted and would not grow, despite
her constancy in watering them. Next, she saw confusedly the vast town
and the vast house blackened by age, to which her mother took her when
she was seven years old. Her lively memory showed her the old gray
heads of the masters who taught and tormented her. She remembered the
person of her father; she saw him getting off his mule at the door of
the manor-house, and taking her by the hand to lead her up the stairs;
she recalled how her prattle drove from his brow the judicial cares he
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