| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: a group of mud-coloured huts from which a black muddy road ran
down in an irregular streak through the white field. That was
Pestrovo, concerning which my anonymous correspondent had written
to me. If it had not been for the crows who, foreseeing rain or
snowy weather, floated cawing over the pond and the fields, and
the tapping in the carpenter's shed, this bit of the world about
which such a fuss was being made would have seemed like the Dead
Sea; it was all so still, motionless, lifeless, and dreary!
My uneasiness hindered me from working and concentrating myself;
I did not know what it was, and chose to believe it was
disappointment. I had actually given up my post in the Department
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane: "More than one feller has said that t'-day,"
observed a man.
His friend, recently aroused, was still very
drowsy. He looked behind him until his mind
took in the meaning of the movement. Then he
sighed. "Oh, well, I s'pose we got licked," he
remarked sadly.
The youth had a thought that it would not be
handsome for him to freely condemn other men.
He made an attempt to restrain himself, but the
words upon his tongue were too bitter. He
The Red Badge of Courage |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac: Granson, composing her face to an expression of the deepest dejection.
CHAPTER III
ATHANASE
Madame Granson, widow of a lieutenant-colonel of artillery killed at
Jena, possessed, as her whole means of livelihood, a meagre pension of
nine hundred francs a year, and three hundred francs from property of
her own, plus a son whose support and education had eaten up all her
savings. She occupied, in the rue du Bercail, one of those melancholy
ground-floor apartments which a traveller passing along the principal
street of a little provincial town can look through at a glance. The
street door opened at the top of three steep steps; a passage led to
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