| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane: the lieutenant, who had no appreciation of fine
minds. He was a mere brute.
After a time the brigade was halted in the
cathedral light of a forest. The busy skirmish-
ers were still popping. Through the aisles of
the wood could be seen the floating smoke from
their rifles. Sometimes it went up in little balls,
white and compact.
During this halt many men in the regiment
began erecting tiny hills in front of them. They
used stones, sticks, earth, and anything they
The Red Badge of Courage |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Black Beauty by Anna Sewell: that the journey was put off till the afternoon, so James had the morning
on hand, and went first to the inn to see about our harness and the carriage,
and then to hear more about the fire. When he came back we heard him tell
the hostler about it. At first no one could guess how the fire
had been caused, but at last a man said he saw Dick Towler go into the stable
with a pipe in his mouth, and when he came out he had not one,
and went to the tap for another. Then the under hostler said
he had asked Dick to go up the ladder to put down some hay, but told him
to lay down his pipe first. Dick denied taking the pipe with him,
but no one believed him. I remember our John Manly's rule, never to allow
a pipe in the stable, and thought it ought to be the rule everywhere.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart: helplessly against barriers of language, of strange customs, of
stolidity that were not far from absolute cruelty.
She held to her determination, however, at first with hope, then,
as the pension in advance and the lessons at fifty Kronen--also
in advance,--went on, recklessly. She played marvelously those
days, crying out through her violin the despair she had sealed
her lips against. On Thursday, playing for the master, she turned
to find him flourishing his handkerchief, and went home in a sort
of daze, incredulous that she could have moved him to tears.
The little Bulgarian was frankly her slave now. He had given up
the coffee-houses that he might spend that hour near her, on the
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