| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: As a criminal who is being led to execution knows that he must die
immediately, but yet looks about him and straightens the cap that is
awry on his head, so Moscow involuntarily continued its wonted life,
though it knew that the time of its destruction was near when the
conditions of life to which its people were accustomed to submit would
be completely upset.
During the three days preceding the occupation of Moscow the whole
Rostov family was absorbed in various activities. The head of the
family, Count Ilya Rostov, continually drove about the city collecting
the current rumors from all sides and gave superficial and hasty
orders at home about the preparations for their departure.
War and Peace |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett: mission. He was a good deal crippled, and thought they'd confine
him in some jail of a hospital. He said he was waiting to find the
right men to tell, somebody bound north. Once in a while they
stopped there to leave a mail or something. He was set in his
notions, and let two or three proper explorin' expeditions go by
him because he didn't like their looks; but when I was there he had
got restless, fearin' he might be taken away or something. He had
all his directions written out straight as a string to give the
right ones. I wanted him to trust 'em to me, so I might have
something to show, but he wouldn't. I suppose he's dead now. I
wrote to him an' I done all I could. 'Twill be a great exploit
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: waded out on a point of reeds and cast the artful fly in the shadow
of the great cliffs of the Dead Mountains.
It was a fit scene for a lone fisherman. But four sociable
tourists promptly appeared to act as spectators and critics. Fly-
fishing usually strikes the German mind as an eccentricity which
calls for remonstrance. After one of the tourists had suggestively
narrated the tale of seven trout which he had caught in another
lake, WITH WORMS, on the previous Sunday, they went away for a row,
(with salutations in which politeness but thinly veiled their
pity,) and left me still whipping the water in vain. Nor was the
fortune of the day much better in the stream below. It was a long
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