| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: down the outside rank, a shrouded figure was sitting upright,
wagging its head slowly from one side to the other--a grisly spectacle!
Its side was toward me. I hurried to it and peered into its face.
Heavens, it was Adler!
Can you divine what my first thought was? Put into words,
it was this: 'It seems, then, you escaped me once:
there will be a different result this time!'
Evidently this creature was suffering unimaginable terrors.
Think what it must have been to wake up in the midst of that
voiceless hush, and, look out over that grim congregation
of the dead! What gratitude shone in his skinny white face
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Baby Mine by Margaret Mayo: "It's hard to believe, isn't it?" commented a third, and his host
apologised for the absent Alfred by saying that he was no doubt
worried about a particular business decision that had to be made
the next morning.
But it was not the responsibility of this business decision that
was knotting Alfred's brow, as he walked hurriedly toward the
hotel, where he had told his office boy to leave the last mail.
This had been the longest interval that Zoie had ever let slip
without writing. He recalled that her last letters had hinted at
a "slight indisposition." In fact, she had even mentioned
"seeing the doctor"--"Good Heavens!" he thought, "Suppose she
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: for the ear he still leaves the tissue of the sentence
floating somewhat loose. In prose, the sentence turns upon a
pivot, nicely balanced, and fits into itself with an
obtrusive neatness like a puzzle. The ear remarks and is
singly gratified by this return and balance; while in verse
it is all diverted to the measure. To find comparable
passages is hard; for either the versifier is hugely the
superior of the rival, or, if he be not, and still persist in
his more delicate enterprise, he fails to be as widely his
inferior. But let us select them from the pages of the same
writer, one who was ambidexter; let us take, for instance,
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