| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott: this, Jo wrathfully proposed that Mr. Davis be arrested without delay,
and Hannah shook her fist at the `villain' and pounded potatoes for
dinner as if she had him under her pestle.
No notice was taken of Amy's flight, except by her mates, but
the sharp-eyed demoiselles discovered that Mr. Davis was quite
benignant in the afternoon, also unusually nervous. Just before
school closed, Jo appeared, wearing a grim expression as she
stalked up to the desk, and delivered a letter from her mother,
then collected Amy's property, and departed, carefully scraping
the mud from her boots on the door mat, as if she shook that dust
of the place off her feet.
Little Women |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: Bianca helped me to kill the Provveditore. Once before she had refused
flight with me; but after six months of happiness she wished only to
die with me, and received several thrusts. I was entangled in a great
cloak that they flung over me, carried down to a gondola, and hurried
to the Pozzi dungeons. I was twenty-two years old. I gripped the hilt
of my broken sword so hard, that they could only have taken it from me
by cutting off my hand at the wrist. A curious chance, or rather the
instinct of self-preservation, led me to hide the fragment of the
blade in a corner of my cell, as if it might still be of use. They
tended me; none of my wounds were serious. At two-and-twenty one can
recover from anything. I was to lose my head on the scaffold. I
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Roads of Destiny by O. Henry: space in a houseful of books. He is a learned man; he visits Paris
each year; he himself has written books. He will tell you when the
catacombs were made, how they found out the names of the stars, and
why the plover has a long bill. The meaning and the form of poetry is
to him as intelligent as the baa of a sheep is to you. I will give you
a letter to him, and you shall take him your poems and let him read
them. Then you will know if you shall write more, or give your
attention to your wife and business."
"Write the letter," said David, "I am sorry you did not speak of this
sooner."
At sunrise the next morning he was on the road to Dreux with the
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