| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The American by Henry James: Evidently he startled the Bellegardes, and they had not their
grand behavior immediately in hand. Newman hurried past them,
guided only by the desire to get out of the convent walls
and into the street. The gate opened itself at his approach;
he strode over the threshold and it closed behind him.
A carriage which appeared to have been standing there,
was just turning away from the sidewalk. Newman looked at it
for a moment, blankly; then he became conscious, through the dusky
mist that swam before his eyes, that a lady seated in it was bowing
to him. The vehicle had turned away before he recognized her;
it was an ancient landau with one half the cover lowered.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: intelligent face, always lounging among a lot of us little fellows,
laughing at us oftener than with us, but such a soft, satisfied
laugh that we felt rather flattered when we provoked it. In
after-years people said that Arthur had been given to evil ways
as a ]ad, and it is true that we often saw him with the gambler's
sons and with old Spanish Fanny's boy, but if he learned anything
ugly in their company he never betrayed it to us. We would have
followed Arthur anywhere, and I am bound to say that he led us into
no worse places than the cattail marshes and the stubble fields.
These, then, were the boys who camped with me that summer night
upon the sand bar.
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Exiles by Honore de Balzac: then took her into the young man's room, and from thence she descried
her two lodgers crossing the river in the ferry boat.
"They stand like two statues," said she to herself. "Ah, ha! They are
landing at the Rue du Fouarre. How nimble he is, the sweet youth! He
jumped out like a bird. By him the old man looks like some stone saint
in the Cathedral.--They are going to the old School of the Four
Nations. Presto! they are out of sight.--And this is where he lives,
poor cherub!" she went on, looking about the room. "How smart and
winning he is! Ah! your fine gentry are made of other stuff than we
are."
And Jacqueline went down again after smoothing down the bed-coverlet,
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