| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: " 'My dear sir, if you had seen, as I then saw, that vast room,
papered and hung with brown, you would have felt yourself transported
into a scene of a romance. It was icy, nay more, funereal,' and he
lifted his hand with a theatrical gesture and paused.
" 'By dint of seeking, as I approached the bed, at last I saw Madame
de Merret, under the glimmer of the lamp, which fell on the pillows.
Her face was as yellow as wax, and as narrow as two folded hands. The
Countess had a lace cap showing her abundant hair, but as white as
linen thread. She was sitting up in bed, and seemed to keep upright
with great difficulty. Her large black eyes, dimmed by fever, no
doubt, and half-dead already, hardly moved under the bony arch of her
La Grande Breteche |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Light of Western Stars by Zane Grey: One April morning Madeline sat in her office wrestling with a
problem. She had problems to solve every day. The majority of
these were concerned with the management of twenty-seven
incomprehensible cowboys. This particular problem involved
Ambrose Mills, who had eloped with her French maid, Christine.
Stillwell faced Madeline with a smile almost as huge as his bulk.
"Wal, Miss Majesty, we ketched them; but not before Padre Marcos
had married them. All thet speedin' in the autoomoobile was jest
a-scarin' of me to death fer nothin'. I tell you Link Stevens is
crazy about runnin' thet car. Link never hed no sense even with
a hoss. He ain't afraid of the devil hisself. If my hair hedn't
The Light of Western Stars |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: 'Oh,' he said, 'it's only one interpretation. It all depends on
what a fellow sees. No fellow can see everything.'
'Till you came,' I insisted, 'nobody had seen anything.'
He shook his head, but I could read in his face that this was not
news to him.
'That is mainly what I came up to tell you,' I continued, 'to beg
that you will go on and on. To hope that you will stay a long time
and do a great deal. It is such an extraordinary chance that any
one should turn up who can say what the country really means.'
He stuck his hands in his pockets with a restive movement. 'Oh,
don't make me feel responsible,' he said, 'I hate that;' and then
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