| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac: up to one of those matutinal reveries in the course of which a young
man glides like a sylph under many a silken, or cashmere, or cotton
drapery. The heavier the body from its weight of sleep, the more
active the mind. Rastignac finally got up, without yawning over-much
as many ill-bred persons are apt to do. He rang for his valet, ordered
tea, and drank immoderately of it when it came; which will not seem
extraordinary to persons who like tea; but to explain the circumstance
to others, who regard that beverage as a panacea for indigestion, I
will add that Eugene was, by this time, writing letters. He was
comfortably seated, with his feet more frequently on the andirons
than, properly, on the rug. Ah! to have one's feet on the polished bar
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin: I had hardly finish'd this business, and got my fort well stor'd
with provisions, when I receiv'd a letter from the governor,
acquainting me that he had call'd the Assembly, and wished my
attendance there, if the posture of affairs on the frontiers
was such that my remaining there was no longer necessary.
My friends, too, of the Assembly, pressing me by their letters to be,
if possible, at the meeting, and my three intended forts being
now compleated, and the inhabitants contented to remain on their farms
under that protection, I resolved to return; the more willingly,
as a New England officer, Colonel Clapham, experienced in Indian war,
being on a visit to our establishment, consented to accept the command.
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: perplexity, too inarticulate for words, with which he had
acquiesced to her explanations.
These moments were rare with her, however. Her marriage had been
too concrete a misery to be surveyed philosophically. If she had
been unhappy for complex reasons, the unhappiness was as real as
though it had been uncomplicated. Soul is more bruisable than
flesh, and Julia was wounded in every fibre of her spirit. Her
husband's personality seemed to be closing gradually in on her,
obscuring the sky and cutting off the air, till she felt herself
shut up among the decaying bodies of her starved hopes. A sense
of having been decoyed by some world-old conspiracy into this
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