| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Tin Woodman of Oz by L. Frank Baum: barely covered their feet, they looked around the
garden and found that no person was visible save
themselves. No sound of activity came from the house,
either, but they walked to the front door, which had a
little porch built before it, and there the two tinmen
stood side by side while both knocked upon the door
with their tin knuckles.
As no one seemed eager to answer the summons they
knocked again; and then again. Finally they heard a
stir from within and someone coughed.
"Who's there?" called a girl's voice.
The Tin Woodman of Oz |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson: at least, that he did not raise his head, but continued without
interruption to pursue his strange employment. Between his feet
stood an open hat-box; in one hand he held the sleeve of his
sealskin great-coat; in the other a formidable knife, with which he
had just slit up the lining of the sleeve. Mr. Rolles had read of
persons carrying money in a belt; and as he had no acquaintance
with any but cricket-belts, he had never been able rightly to
conceive how this was managed. But here was a stranger thing
before his eyes; for John Vandeleur, it appeared, carried diamonds
in the lining of his sleeve; and even as the young clergyman gazed,
he could see one glittering brilliant drop after another into the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: New Year he would go; prompted at least as much by a desire to
live among cleaner surroundings as by a wish to shake off
Vautrin, whose huge hand he seemed to feel on his shoulder at
that moment. When you consider the numberless forms, clamorous or
mute, that corruption takes in Paris, common-sense begins to
wonder what mental aberration prompted the State to establish
great colleges and schools there, and assemble young men in the
capital; how it is that pretty women are respected, or that the
gold coin displayed in the money-changer's wooden saucers does
not take to itself wings in the twinkling of an eye; and when you
come to think further, how comparatively few cases of crime there
Father Goriot |
