| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: mid-day, we were only half way.
"We will stop to rest over there," I said, pointing to a promontory of
rocks sufficiently high to make it probable we should find a grotto.
The fisherman, who heard me and saw the direction in which I pointed,
shook his head, and said,--
"Some one is there. All those who come from the village of Batz to
Croisic, or from Croisic to Batz, go round that place; they never pass
it."
These words were said in a low voice, and seemed to indicate a
mystery.
"Who is he,--a robber, a murderer?"
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy: become, she could not bring herself to attempt the
handle. She listened. The dead silence within was
broken only by a regular beat.
Drip, drip, drip.
Mrs Brooks hastened downstairs, opened the front door,
and ran into the street. A man she knew, one of the
workmen employed at an adjoining villa, was passing by,
and she begged him to come in and go upstairs with her;
she feared something had happened to one of her
lodgers. The workman assented, and followed her to the
landing.
Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The American by Henry James: women's voices. It began softly, but it presently grew louder,
and as it increased it became more of a wail and a dirge.
It was the chant of the Carmelite nuns, their only human utterance.
It was their dirge over their buried affections and over the vanity
of earthly desires. At first Newman was bewildered--almost stunned--
by the strangeness of the sound; then, as he comprehended
its meaning, he listened intently and his heart began to throb.
He listened for Madame de Cintre's voice, and in the very
heart of the tuneless harmony he imagined he made it out.
(We are obliged to believe that he was wrong, inasmuch as
she had obviously not yet had time to become a member
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