| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: conception, which at last brought him to his feet in the sudden
excitement of a plan. He wandered softly through the aisles,
pausing in the different chapels, all save one applied to a special
devotion. It was in this clear recess, lampless and unapplied,
that he stood longest - the length of time it took him fully to
grasp the conception of gilding it with his bounty. He should
snatch it from no other rites and associate it with nothing
profane; he would simply take it as it should be given up to him
and make it a masterpiece of splendour and a mountain of fire.
Tended sacredly all the year, with the sanctifying church round it,
it would always be ready for his offices. There would be
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: old familiar face upon the mountain-side. The brow, with its
massive depth and loftiness, and all the other features, indeed,
were boldly and strongly hewn, as if in emulation of a more than
heroic, of a Titanic model. But the sublimity and stateliness,
the grand expression of a divine sympathy, that illuminated the
mountain visage and etherealized its ponderous granite substance
into spirit, might here be sought in vain. Something had been
originally left out, or had departed. And therefore the
marvellously gifted statesman had always a weary gloom in the
deep caverns of his eyes, as of a child that has outgrown its
playthings or a man of mighty faculties and little aims, whose
The Snow Image |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Roads of Destiny by O. Henry: Virginia, you know. The young lady is Miss Eva Bedford--I reckon
you've heard of the Bedfords. She's seventeen and one of the Bedfords
of Bedford County. We've eloped from home to get married, and we
wanted to see New York. We got in this afternoon. Somebody got my
pocketbook on the ferry-boat, and I had only three cents in change
outside of it. I'll get some work somewhere to-morrow, and we'll get
married."
"But, I say, old man," said Pilkins, in confidential low tones, "you
can't keep the lady out here in the cold all night. Now, as for
hotels--"
"I told you," said the youth, with a broader smile, "that I didn't
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