| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Miracle Mongers and Their Methods by Harry Houdini: simple. Out of a hundred persons submitted
to the experiment, ninety-nine,
knowing that the experimenter wishes to
lift them and cause them to fall forward,
grasp the seat or arms of the chair, and,
in endeavoring to resist, make the whole
weight of their body bear upon their feet.
If they do not do so at the first instant,
they do so when they are conscious of the
attempts of the girl to raise the seat, and
they help therein unconsciously. The
 Miracle Mongers and Their Methods |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert: circle; and its extravagantly long arms reached down their palms to
them as though to seize the crown that they formed and carry it to the
sky.
The rich, the Ancients, the women, the whole multitude, thronged
behind the priests and on the terraces of the houses. The large
painted stars revolved no longer; the tabernacles were set upon the
ground; and the fumes from the censers ascended perpendicularly,
spreading their bluish branches through the azure like gigantic trees.
Many fainted; others became inert and petrified in their ecstasy.
Infinite anguish weighed upon the breasts of the beholders. The last
shouts died out one by one,--and the people of Carthage stood
 Salammbo |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: time, from no one whomsoever. What he felt was that he couldn't at
present have begun to tell her, and yet could profit perhaps
exquisitely by the accident of having done so of old. "Please
don't then. We're just right as it is."
"Oh I am," she laughed, "if you are!" To which she added: "Then
you do still feel in the same way?"
It was impossible he shouldn't take to himself that she was really
interested, though it all kept coining as a perfect surprise. He
had thought of himself so long as abominably alone, and lo he
wasn't alone a bit. He hadn't been, it appeared, for an hour--
since those moments on the Sorrento boat. It was she who had been,
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