| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell: "Set down," he ordered briefly. "Pick up yore sewin'. Sew like
nothin' had happened. For all we know, the Yankees might have been
spyin' on this house since sundown. Set down, I say, and sew."
Trembling they obeyed, even Pitty picking up a sock and holding it
in shaking fingers while her eyes, wide as a frightened child's
went around the circle for an explanation.
"Where is Ashley? What has happened to him, Melly?" cried
Scarlett.
"Where's your husband? Aren't you interested in him?" India's
pale eyes blazed with insane malice as she crumpled and
straightened the torn towel she had been mending.
 Gone With the Wind |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: blushing red and changing her place again, what she appeared to
learn he perceived in it. He got up and "How you must have loved
him!" he cried.
"Women aren't like men. They can love even where they've
suffered."
"Women are wonderful," said Stransom. "But I assure you I've
forgiven him too."
"If I had known of anything so strange I wouldn't have brought you
here."
"So that we might have gone on in our ignorance to the last?"
"What do you call the last?" she asked, smiling still.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sylvie and Bruno by Lewis Carroll: Well, something like that went on all through this ghastly--or shall we
say 'ghostly'?---banquet. An empty fork is raised to the lips: there
it receives a neatly-cut piece of mutton, and swiftly conveys it to the
plate, where it instantly attaches itself to the mutton already there.
Soon one of the plates, furnished with a complete slice of mutton and
two potatoes, was handed up to the presiding gentleman, who quietly
replaced the slice on the joint, and the potatoes in the dish.
Their conversation was, if possible, more bewildering than their mode
of dining. It began by the youngest girl suddenly, and without
provocation, addressing her eldest sister.
"Oh, you wicked story-teller!" she said.
 Sylvie and Bruno |