| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy: The timber-merchant's eyes fell for a moment. "I don't know--I
don't know," he said. "'Tis a trying strait. Well, well; there's
no hurry. We'll wait and see how he gets on."
That evening he called her into his room, a snug little apartment
behind the large parlor. It had at one time been part of the
bakehouse, with the ordinary oval brick oven in the wall; but Mr.
Melbury, in turning it into an office, had built into the cavity
an iron safe, which he used for holding his private papers. The
door of the safe was now open, and his keys were hanging from it.
"Sit down, Grace, and keep me company," he said. "You may amuse
yourself by looking over these." He threw out a heap of papers
The Woodlanders |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from One Basket by Edna Ferber: to a mottled mess of yellow and white. The spoon lay on the
cloth. His coffee, only half consumed, showed tan with a cold
gray film over it. A slice of toast at the left of his plate
seemed to grin at her with the semi-circular wedge that he had
bitten out of it.
Terry stared down at these congealing remnants. Then she
laughed, a hard high little laugh, pushed a plate away
contemptuously with her hand, and walked into the sitting room.
On the piano was the piece of music (Bennie Gottschalk's great
song hit, "Hicky Boola") which she had been playing the night
before. She picked it up, tore it straight across, once, placed
One Basket |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: itself under adverse circumstances as we have ever met with.
It is not for nothing, either, that the umbrella has become
the very foremost badge of modern civilisation - the Urim and
Thummim of respectability. Its pregnant symbolism has taken
its rise in the most natural manner. Consider, for a moment,
when umbrellas were first introduced into this country, what
manner of men would use them, and what class would adhere to
the useless but ornamental cane. The first, without doubt,
would be the hypochondriacal, out of solicitude for their
health, or the frugal, out of care for their raiment; the
second, it is equally plain, would include the fop, the fool,
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