| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Octopus by Frank Norris: compromise with conscience, the remorse of a bad deed done in a
moment of excitement. Ah, the humiliation of detection, the
degradation of being caught, caught like a schoolboy pilfering
his fellows' desks, and, worse than all, worse than all, the
consciousness of lost self-respect, the knowledge of a prestige
vanishing, a dignity impaired, knowledge that the grip which held
a multitude in check was trembling, that control was wavering,
that command was being weakened. Then the little tricks to
deceive the crowd, the little subterfuges, the little pretences
that kept up appearances, the lies, the bluster, the pose, the
strut, the gasconade, where once was iron authority; the turning
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: the Loire in its bed, and serve as a causeway for the highroad from
Paris to Nantes. At the top of the steps a gate opens upon a narrow
stony footpath between two terraces, for here the soil is banked up,
and walls are built to prevent landslips. These earthworks, as it
were, are crowned with trellises and espaliers, so that the steep path
that lies at the foot of the upper wall is almost hidden by the trees
that grow on the top of the lower, upon which it lies. The view of the
river widens out before you at every step as you climb to the house.
At the end you come to a second gateway, a Gothic archway covered with
simple ornament, now crumbling into ruin and overgrown with
wildflowers--moss and ivy, wallflowers and pellitory. Every stone wall
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells: birth-pangs. I felt--I felt living in a masked world. I felt as
though I had bandaged eyes. I felt--wrapped in thick cobwebs.
They blinded me. They got in my mouth. And now--Dear! Dear!
The dayspring from on high hath visited me. I love. I am loved.
I want to shout! I want to sing! I am glad! I am glad to be
alive because you are alive! I am glad to be a woman because you
are a man! I am glad! I am glad! I am glad! I thank God for
life and you. I thank God for His sunlight on your face. I
thank God for the beauty you love and the faults you love. I
thank God for the very skin that is peeling from your nose, for
all things great and small that make us what we are. This is
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