| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac: but Rastignac did not yet know how to analyze a woman's face by a
rapid or sidelong glance. The lips of the marquise paled, but that was
all. She rang the bell for wood, and so constrained Rastignac to rise
and take his leave.
"If that be so," said the marquise, stopping Eugene with a cold and
rigid manner, "you will find it difficult to explain, monsieur, why
your pen should, by accident, write my name. A name, written on a
letter, is not a friend's opera-hat, which you might have taken,
carelessly, on leaving a ball."
Eugene, discomfited, looked at the marquise with an air that was both
stupid and conceited. He felt that he was becoming ridiculous; and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Anthem by Ayn Rand: our tunnel. We had been caught.
It happened on that night when we wrote
last. We forgot, that night, to watch the
sand in the glass which tells us when three
hours have passed and it is time to return
to the City Theatre. When we remembered
it, the sand had run out.
We hastened to the Theatre. But the big
tent stood grey and silent against the sky.
The streets of the City lay before us, dark
and empty. If we went back to hide in our
Anthem |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Lobo: posted themselves on an eminence near at hand that overlooked us;
there they insulted us by brandishing their lances and daggers. We
were fortunately not above a stone's cast from the sea, and could
therefore have retreated to our bark had we found ourselves reduced
to extremities. This made us not very solicitous about their
menaces; but finding that they continued to hover about our
habitation, and being wearied with their clamours, we thought it
might be a good expedient to fright them away by firing four muskets
towards them, in such a manner that they might hear the bullets hiss
about two feet over their heads. This had the effect we wished; the
noise and fire of our arms struck them with so much terror that they
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