| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Chouans by Honore de Balzac: defined against the skies in the rising glow. The sun freed itself
with a graceful spring from the ribbons of flame and ochre and
sapphire. Its vivid light took level lines from hill to hill and
flowed into the vales. The dusk dispersed, day mastered Nature. A
sharp breeze crisped the air, the birds sang, life wakened everywhere.
But the girl had hardly time to cast her eyes over the whole of this
wondrous landscape before, by a phenomenon not infrequent in these
cool regions, the mists spread themselves in sheets, filled the
valleys, and rose to the tops of the mountains, burying the great
valley beneath a mantle of snow. Mademoiselle de Verneuil fancied for
a moment she saw a /mer de glace/, like those of the Alps. Then the
The Chouans |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: arated from his companion, and when he descended
into the bottom of that ship his heart seemed to melt
suddenly within him.
"It was then also, as he told me, that he lost con-
tact for good and all with one of those three men
who the summer before had been going about
through all the little towns in the foothills of his
country. They would arrive on market days driv-
ing in a peasant's cart, and would set up an office
in an inn or some other Jew's house. There were
three of them, of whom one with a long beard
Amy Foster |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Adventure by Jack London: by fleeing to the bush. Sheldon saw how imperative it was to teach
his new-caught cannibals that bad examples were disastrous things
to pattern after, and he urged Seelee on night and day, while with
the Tahitians he practically lived in the bush, leaving Joan in
charge of the plantation. To the north Boucher did good work,
twice turning the fugitives back when they attempted to gain the
coast.
One by one the boys were captured. In the first man-drive through
the mangrove swamp Seelee caught two. Circling around to the
north, a third was wounded in the thigh by Boucher, and this one,
dragging behind in the chase, was later gathered in by Seelee's
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