| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg by Mark Twain: late publication was made I recalled them, and I resolved to claim
the sack of coin, for by every right I was entitled to it. Now I
will ask you to consider this point, and weigh it well; that
stranger's gratitude to me that night knew no bounds; he said
himself that he could find no words for it that were adequate, and
that if he should ever be able he would repay me a thousandfold.
Now, then, I ask you this; could I expect--could I believe--could I
even remotely imagine--that, feeling as he did, he would do so
ungrateful a thing as to add those quite unnecessary fifteen words
to his test?--set a trap for me?--expose me as a slanderer of my own
town before my own people assembled in a public hall? It was
 The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Awakening & Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin: Gaston proposed doing so.
Gouvernail's personality puzzled Mrs. Baroda, but she liked
him. Indeed, he was a lovable, inoffensive fellow. After a few
days, when she could understand him no better than at first, she
gave over being puzzled and remained piqued. In this mood she left
her husband and her guest, for the most part, alone together. Then
finding that Gouvernail took no manner of exception to her action,
she imposed her society upon him, accompanying him in his idle
strolls to the mill and walks along the batture. She persistently
sought to penetrate the reserve in which he had unconsciously
enveloped himself.
 Awakening & Selected Short Stories |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: from the windows was obscured; the sound was like that of the distant
practising of a drum-corps. After their first excitement was over, the
big flies with the bluish bellies, accompanied by the stinging little
ones, returned to their quarters in the windows, where on three tiers
of planks, the paint of which was indistinguishable under the fly-
specks, were rows of viscous bottles ranged like soldiers.
Marie was crying. To be struck before a rival by the man she loves is
one of those humiliations that no woman can endure, no matter what her
place on the social ladder may be; and the lower that place is, the
more violent is the expression of her wrath. The Tonsard girl took no
notice of Rigou or of Socquard; she flung herself on a bench, in
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