| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: of slumber, my highly-respected mother woke up to the recollection
that she had a son who might do her honor. Often when a vine-stock
is eradicated, some years after shoots come up to the surface of
the ground; well, my dear boy, my mother had almost torn me up by
the roots from her heart, and I sprouted again in her head. At the
age of fifty-eight, she thinks herself old enough to think no more
of any men but her son. At this juncture she has met in some hot-
water cauldron, at I know not what baths, a delightful old maid--
English, with two hundred and forty thousand francs a year; and,
like a good mother, she has inspired her with an audacious
ambition to become my wife. A maid of six-and-thirty, my word!
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane: roared and bobbed his shock of red wig until the audience broke out
in excited applause.
Pete did not pay much attention to the progress of events upon
the stage. He was drinking beer and watching Maggie.
Her cheeks were blushing with excitement and her eyes were
glistening. She drew deep breaths of pleasure. No thoughts of the
atmosphere of the collar and cuff factory came to her.
When the orchestra crashed finally, they jostled their way to
the sidewalk with the crowd. Pete took Maggie's arm and pushed a
way for her, offering to fight with a man or two.
They reached Maggie's home at a late hour and stood for a
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Summer by Edith Wharton: Mr. Royall's was the only house where the young man
could have been offered a decent hospitality. There
had been nothing, therefore, in the outward course of
events to raise in Charity's breast the hopes with
which it trembled. But beneath the visible incidents
resulting from Lucius Harney's arrival there ran an
undercurrent as mysterious and potent as the influence
that makes the forest break into leaf before the ice is
off the pools.
The business on which Harney had come was authentic;
Charity had seen the letter from a New York publisher
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