| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton: its insignificance and remoteness, for the symbol of his
increasing abnegations; of that perpetual paring-off that was
gradually reducing existence to the naked business of keeping
himself alive. It was the futility of his multiplied shifts and
privations that made them seem unworthy of a high attitude; the
sense that, however rapidly he eliminated the superfluous, his
cleared horizon was likely to offer no nearer view of the one
prospect toward which he strained. To give up things in order to
marry the woman one loves is easier than to give them up without
being brought appreciably nearer to such a conclusion.
Through the open door he saw young Hollingsworth rise with a yawn
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: disease interested the physician, but he was strongly moved to
look into the character and qualities of the patient, these two
men, so different in age, came gradually to spend much time
together. For the sake of the minister's health, and to enable
the leech to gather plants with healing balm in them, they took
long walks on the sea-shore, or in the forest; mingling various
walks with the splash and murmur of the waves, and the solemn
wind-anthem among the tree-tops. Often, likewise, one was the
guest of the other in his place of study and retirement There was
a fascination for the minister in the company of the man of
science, in whom he recognised an intellectual cultivation of no
The Scarlet Letter |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Pericles by William Shakespeare: As ever hit my nostril. So up with it.
O you most potent gods! what's here? a corse!
FIRST GENTLEMAN.
Most strange!
CERIMON.
Shrouded in cloth of state; balm'd and entreasured
With full bags of spices! A passport too!
Apollo, perfect me in the characters!
[Reads from a scroll.]
'Here I give to understand,
If e'er this coffin drive a-land,
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