| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Reef by Edith Wharton: was once more perceptible.
"Admirable," she emphasized. "And so has SHE."
"Oh, and so have you to HER!" His voice broke down to
boyishness. "I've never lost sight of that for a minute.
It's been altogether easier for her, though," he threw off
presently.
"On the whole, I suppose it has. Well----" she summed up
with a laugh, "aren't you all the better pleased to be told
you've behaved as well as she?"
"Oh, you know, I've not done it for you," he tossed back at
her, without the least note of hostility in the affected
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad: might have been round the corner of the next spur of the nearest
hill. I dismounted to bandage the shoulder of my trooper. It was
only a nasty long scratch. While I was busy about it a bell began
to ring in the distance. The sound fell deliciously on the ear,
clear like the morning light. But it stopped all at once. You
know how a distant bell stops suddenly. I never knew before what
stillness meant. While I was wondering at it the fellow holding
our horses was moved to uplift his voice. He was a Spaniard, not a
Basque, and he trolled out in Castilian that song you know,
"'Oh bells of my native village,
I am going away . . . good-bye!'
The Arrow of Gold |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: up every night by the watch to secure public safety.
This house, remarkable for its antiquity, had been constructed in a
way that bore witness to the unhealthiness of these old dwellings;
for, to preserve the ground-floor from damp, the arches of the cellars
rose about two feet above the soil, and the house was entered up three
outside steps. The door was crowned by a closed arch, of which the
keystone bore a female head and some time-eaten arabesques. Three
windows, their sills about five feet from the ground, belonged to a
small set of rooms looking out on the Rue du Tourniquet, whence they
derived their light. These windows were protected by strong iron bars,
very wide apart, and ending below in an outward curve like the bars of
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