| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: secluded hours before them. They were to keep their eyes fast upon the
paper, and nothing was to tempt them to speech, save at the stroke of
the hour when ten minutes for relaxation were to be allowed them. If
these rules were observed for a year, she made out on a sheet of paper
that the completion of the book was certain, and she laid her scheme
before her mother with a feeling that much of the task was already
accomplished. Mrs. Hilbery examined the sheet of paper very carefully.
Then she clapped her hands and exclaimed enthusiastically:
"Well done, Katharine! What a wonderful head for business you've got!
Now I shall keep this before me, and every day I shall make a little
mark in my pocketbook, and on the last day of all--let me think, what
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Passion in the Desert by Honore de Balzac: went down the opposite side of the hill to that by which he had come
up the day before. The remains of a rug showed that this place of
refuge had at one time been inhabited; at a short distance he saw some
palm trees full of dates. Then the instinct which binds us to life
awoke again in his heart. He hoped to live long enough to await the
passing of some Maugrabins, or perhaps he might hear the sound of
cannon; for at this time Bonaparte was traversing Egypt.
This thought gave him new life. The palm tree seemed to bend with the
weight of the ripe fruit. He shook some of it down. When he tasted
this unhoped-for manna, he felt sure that the palms had been
cultivated by a former inhabitant--the savory, fresh meat of the dates
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: "I went once to Guerande to draw for the conscription; and I went to
Savenay to the messieurs who measure for the army. If I had been half
an inch taller they'd have made me a soldier. I should have died of my
first march, and my poor father would to-day be begging his bread."
I had thought out many dramas; Pauline was accustomed to great
emotions beside a man so suffering as myself; well, never had either
of us listened to words so moving as these. We walked on in silence,
measuring, each of us, the silent depths of that obscure life,
admiring the nobility of a devotion which was ignorant of itself. The
strength of that feebleness amazed us; the man's unconscious
generosity belittled us. I saw that poor being of instinct chained to
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