| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The American by Henry James: M. de Bellegarde stared, with a look of unresentful perplexity.
He laid his hand on Newman's sleeve and seemed on the point
of saying something, but he suddenly checked himself,
leaned back in his chair, and puffed at his cigar.
At last, however, breaking silence,--"Certainly," he said,
"my coming to see you is an act of friendship. Nevertheless I
was in a measure obliged to do so. My sister asked me to come,
and a request from my sister is, for me, a law. I was near you,
and I observed lights in what I supposed were your rooms.
It was not a ceremonious hour for making a call, but I was not
sorry to do something that would show I was not performing
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Vision Splendid by William MacLeod Raine: up again, but he was still trying for a lead when Alice saw Mrs.
Van Tyle and Beauchamp coming toward them.
She rose. Her eyes were the brightest Jeff had ever seen. They
were filled with an ardent tenderness. It was as if she were
wrapped in a spiritual exaltation.
"Thank you. Thank you. I can't tell you what you've done for me."
She turned and walked quickly away. To be dragged back to the
commonplace at once was more than she could bear. First she must
get alone with herself, must take stock of this new emotion that
ran like wine through her blood. A pulse throbbed in her throat,
for she was in a passionate glow of altruism.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Blue Flower by Henry van Dyke: pile of skins. Half-open on the bench lay the book that he had
been reading the evening before, while the snow was falling. It
was a book of veritable fairy-tales, which told how men had made
their way in the world, and achieved great fortunes, and won
success, by toiling hard at first, and then by trading and
bargaining and getting ahead of other men.
"Well," said Luke, to himself, as he stood at the door, "I
could do that too. Without doubt I also am one of the men who
can do things. They did not work any harder than I do. But
they got better pay. I am twenty-five. For ten years I have
worked hard, and what have I got for it? This!"
|
