| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: had heard behind him the click of his great house-door, began for
him, on the jolly corner, as beguilingly as the slow opening bars
of some rich music follows the tap of the conductor's wand.
He always caught the first effect of the steel point of his stick
on the old marble of the hall pavement, large black-and-white
squares that he remembered as the admiration of his childhood and
that had then made in him, as he now saw, for the growth of an
early conception of style. This effect was the dim reverberating
tinkle as of some far-off bell hung who should say where? - in the
depths of the house, of the past, of that mystical other world that
might have flourished for him had he not, for weal or woe,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Blue Flower by Henry van Dyke: for an hour he could hardly reach Borsippa at the appointed
time. His companions would think he had given up the journey.
They would go without him. He would lose his quest.
But if he went on now, the man would surely die. If
Artaban stayed, life might be restored. His spirit throbbed
and fluttered with the urgency of the crisis. Should he risk
the great reward of his faith for the sake of a single deed of
charity? Should he turn aside, if only for a moment, from the
following of the star, to give a cup of cold water to a poor,
perishing Hebrew?
"God of truth and purity," he prayed, "direct me in the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: themselves. Whenever they have had to do with negroes, their
conduct has either been dictated by their interest and their
pride, or by their compassion. They first violated every right
of humanity by their treatment of the negro and they afterwards
informed him that those rights were precious and inviolable.
They affected to open their ranks to the slaves, but the negroes
who attempted to penetrate into the community were driven back
with scorn; and they have incautiously and involuntarily been led
to admit of freedom instead of slavery, without having the
courage to be wholly iniquitous, or wholly just.
If it be impossible to anticipate a period at which the
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