| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: To pour them in a consecrated cup.
TWO BACKGROUNDS.
I.
LA VIERGE AU DONATEUR.
HERE by the ample river's argent sweep,
Bosomed in tilth and vintage to her walls,
A tower-crowned Cybele in armored sleep
The city lies, fat plenty in her halls,
With calm, parochial spires that hold in fee
The friendly gables clustered at their base,
And, equipoised o'er tower and market-place,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Enchanted Island of Yew by L. Frank Baum: He wandered out and found strange scenes confronting him, for during
the hundred years a great change had taken place in the Enchanted
Island. Great cities had been built and great kingdoms established.
Civilization had won the people, and they no longer robbed or fought
or indulged in magical arts, but were busily employed and leading
respectable lives.
When the Red Rogue tried to tell folks who he was, they but laughed at
him, thinking the fellow crazy. He tried to get together a band of
thieves, as Wul-Takim had done in the old days, but none would join him.
And so, forced to be honest against his will, the Rogue was driven to
earn a living by digging in the garden of a wealthy noble, of whom he
The Enchanted Island of Yew |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: the type of the sons of that pure and noble Germany, so fertile in
honorable natures, whose peaceful manners and morals have never been
lost, even after seven invasions.
This stranger laughed with simplicity, listened attentively, and drank
remarkably well, seeming to like champagne as much perhaps as he liked
his straw-colored Johannisburger. His name was Hermann, which is that
of most Germans whom authors bring upon their scene. Like a man who
does nothing frivolously, he was sitting squarely at the banker's
table and eating with that Teutonic appetite so celebrated throughout
Europe, saying, in fact, a conscientious farewell to the cookery of
the great Careme.
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