| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg by Mark Twain: head. In a moment she was alone, and mumbling to herself.
And now Richards and Cox were hurrying through the deserted streets,
from opposite directions. They met, panting, at the foot of the
printing-office stairs; by the night-light there they read each
other's face. Cox whispered:
"Nobody knows about this but us?"
The whispered answer was:
"Not a soul--on honour, not a soul!"
"If it isn't too late to--"
The men were starting up-stairs; at this moment they were overtaken
by a boy, and Cox asked,
The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: resembled the grin of death. Her robe, which was folded across her
breast, showed the emaciation of her beautiful figure. The expression
of her head said plainly that she knew she was changed, and that the
thought filled her with bitterness. She was no longer the arch
Henriette, nor the sublime and saintly Madame de Mortsauf, but the
nameless something of Bossuet struggling against annihilation, driven
to the selfish battle of life against death by hunger and balked
desire. I took her hand, which was dry and burning, to kiss it, as I
seated myself beside her. She guessed my sorrowful surprise from the
very effort that I made to hide it. Her discolored lips drew up from
her famished teeth trying to form a smile,--the forced smile with
The Lily of the Valley |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Roads of Destiny by O. Henry: on that day when he bearded the old Lion Sam Houston himself, and
defied him during that season when secession was the theme. Now, in
bearing and dress, Luke Coonrod Sandifer endeavoured to do credit to
the important arts and sciences of Insurance, Statistics, and History.
He had abandoned the careless dress of his country home. Now, his
broad-brimmed black slouch hat, and his long-tailed "frock" made him
not the least imposing of the official family, even if his office was
reckoned to stand at the tail of the list.
"You wanted to see the governor, ma'am?" asked the commissioner, with
a deferential manner he always used toward the fair sex.
"I hardly know," said the lady, hesitatingly. "I suppose so." And
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