| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from One Basket by Edna Ferber: undistinguishable from it, as were the furred and feathered
creatures. This farmer differed from the city man as a hillock
differs from an artificial golf bunker, though form and substance
are the same.
Ben Westerveld didn't know he was a tragedy. Your farmer is not
given to introspection. For that matter, anyone knows that a
farmer in town is a comedy. Vaudeville, burlesque, the Sunday
supplement, the comic papers, have marked him a fair target for
ridicule. Perhaps one should know him in his overalled,
stubble-bearded days, with the rich black loam of the Mississippi
bottomlands clinging to his boots.
One Basket |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: age of love, during which we enjoy our own sentiments, and in which we
are almost as happy by ourselves, was not likely to last long with
Sarrasine. However, events surprised him when he was still under the
spell of that springtime hallucination, as naive as it was voluptuous.
In a week he lived a whole lifetime, occupied through the day in
molding the clay with which he succeeded in copying La Zambinella,
notwithstanding the veils, the skirts, the waists, and the bows of
ribbon which concealed her from him. In the evening, installed at an
early hour in his box, alone, reclining on a sofa, he made for
himself, like a Turk drunk with opium, a happiness as fruitful, as
lavish, as he wished. First of all, he familiarized himself gradually
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Two Brothers by Honore de Balzac: am forced to consider how I can manage to live here, for five years,
on sixty francs a month."
"It can be done," said the octogenarian.
Philippe talked about things in general, with perfect propriety. He
mentioned the journalist Lousteau, nephew of the old lady, as a "rara
avis," and won her good graces from the moment she heard him say that
the name of Lousteau would become celebrated. He did not hesitate to
admit his faults of conduct. To a friendly admonition which Madame
Hochon addressed to him in a low voice, he replied that he had
reflected deeply while in prison, and could promise that in future he
would live another life.
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