| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: The young man, to whom love gave I know not what power of courage and
eloquence, clasped his hand, and spoke in his turn--spoke for a
quarter of an hour, with so much warmth and feeling, that he altered
the situation. If the question had been a matter of business the old
tradesman would have had fixed principles to guide his decision; but,
tossed a thousand miles from commerce, on the ocean of sentiment,
without a compass, he floated, as he told himself, undecided in the
face of such an unexpected event. Carried away by his fatherly
kindness, he began to beat about the bush.
"Deuce take it, Joseph, you must know that there are ten years between
my two children. Mademoiselle Chevrel was no beauty, still she has had
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: the Castle went off first, they said the Giantess would be quiet,
and vice versa, and then they told tales till the moon got up and
a party of campers in the woods gave us all something to eat.
Then came soft, turfy forest that deadened the wheels, and two
troopers on detachment duty stole noiselessly behind us. One was
the Wrap-up-his-Tail man, and they talked merrily while the
half-broken horses bucked about among the trees. And so a cavalry
escort was with us for a mile, till we got to a mighty hill
strewn with moss agates, and everybody had to jump out and pant
in that thin air. But how intoxicating it was! The old lady from
Chicago ducked like an emancipated hen as she scuttled about the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy: were seldom known to perform a kind or generous action; but the
most barbarous and tyrannical of all were those former serfs who
arose from the dirt and became princes.
It was this latter class who made life literally a burden to
those who were unfortunate enough to come under their rule. Many
of them had arisen from the ranks of the peasantry to become
superintendents of noblemen's estates.
The peasants were obliged to work for their master a certain
number of days each week. There was plenty of land and water and
the soil was rich and fertile, while the meadows and forests were
sufficient to supply the needs of both the peasants and their
The Kreutzer Sonata |
