| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: Natalie, from that dread day when first I entered a graveyard
following the remains of my noble Henriette, whom now you know, the
sun has been less warm, less luminous, the nights more gloomy,
movement less agile, thought more dull. There are some departed whom
we bury in the earth, but there are others more deeply loved for whom
our souls are winding-sheets, whose memory mingles daily with our
heart-beats; we think of them as we breathe; they are in us by the
tender law of a metempsychosis special to love. A soul is within my
soul. When some good thing is done by me, when some true word is
spoken, that soul acts and speaks. All that is good within me issues
from that grave, as the fragrance of a lily fills the air; sarcasm,
The Lily of the Valley |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Bab:A Sub-Deb, Mary Roberts Rinehart by Mary Roberts Rinehart: "Dying pussycat!" mother said, in a very nasty way. "I don't know
what has come over you, Barbara. You used to be a normle Child, and
there was some accounting for what you were going to do. But now!
Take off that nightgown, and I'll have Tanney hold off dinner for
half an hour."
Tanney was the butler who had taken Patrick's place.
"If you insist," I said coldly. "But I shall not eat."
"Why not?"
"You wouldn't understand, mother."
"Oh, I wouldn't? Well, suppose I try," she said, and sat down. "I
am not very intellagent, but if you put it clearly I may grasp it.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson: to be the word) that I like the looks of your behaviour less and less.
You come here to me with all sorts of propositions, which will put me
in a train of very doubtful acts and bring me among very undesirable
persons this many a day to come. And then you tell me you're going
straight out of my office to make your peace with the Advocate! Alan's
button here or Alan's button there, the four quarters of Alan wouldnae
bribe me further in."
"I would take it with a little more temper," said I, "and perhaps we
can avoid what you object to. I can see no way for it but to give
myself up, but perhaps you can see another; and if you could, I could
never deny but what I would be rather relieved. For I think my traffic
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