| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Voice of the City by O. Henry: The waiter came with the little decanters and the
siphon and left them alone again.
"You've called the turn," said Woods, as he rolled
the little gold pencil about with a thoughtful fore-
finger. I've got to pass you up. I can't lay a
hand on you. If I'd a-paid that money back -- but
I didn't, and that settles it. It's a bad break I'm
making, Johnny, but I can't dodge it. You helped
me once, and it calls for the same."
"I knew it," said Kernan, raising his glass, with
a flushed smile of self-appreciation. "I can judge
The Voice of the City |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton: a closing door.
The door was never to reopen; but through its narrow crack
Glennard, as the years went on, became more and more conscious of
an inextinguishable light directing its small ray toward the past
which consumed so little of his own commemorative oil. The
reproach was taken from this thought by Mrs. Aubyn's gradual
translation into terms of universality. In becoming a personage
she so naturally ceased to be a person that Glennard could almost
look back to his explorations of her spirit as on a visit to some
famous shrine, immortalized, but in a sense desecrated, by popular
veneration.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The American by Henry James: He walked down through narrow, winding streets to the edge
of the Seine again, and there he saw, close above him, the soft,
vast towers of Notre Dame. He crossed one of the bridges and
stood a moment in the empty place before the great cathedral;
then he went in beneath the grossly-imaged portals.
He wandered some distance up the nave and sat down in the
splendid dimness. He sat a long time; he heard far-away bells
chiming off, at long intervals, to the rest of the world.
He was very tired; this was the best place he could be in.
He said no prayers; he had no prayers to say.
He had nothing to be thankful for, and he had nothing to ask;
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