| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: on the wharves, smoke on the dingy boats, on the yellow river,--
clinging in a coating of greasy soot to the house-front, the two
faded poplars, the faces of the passers-by. The long train of
mules, dragging masses of pig-iron through the narrow street,
have a foul vapor hanging to their reeking sides. Here, inside,
is a little broken figure of an angel pointing upward from the
mantel-shelf; but even its wings are covered with smoke, clotted
and black. Smoke everywhere! A dirty canary chirps desolately
in a cage beside me. Its dream of green fields and sunshine is
a very old dream,--almost worn out, I think.
From the back-window I can see a narrow brick-yard sloping down
Life in the Iron-Mills |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Peter Pan by James M. Barrie: It was dreadful the way all the three were looking at him, just
as if they did not admire him. "Look here, all of you," he said
entreatingly, as soon as Nana had gone into the bathroom. "I
have just thought of a splendid joke. I shall pour my medicine
into Nana's bowl, and she will drink it, thinking it is milk!"
It was the colour of milk; but the children did not have their
father's sense of humour, and they looked at him reproachfully as
he poured the medicine into Nana's bowl. "What fun!" he said
doubtfully, and they did not dare expose him when Mrs. Darling
and Nana returned.
"Nana, good dog," he said, patting her, "I have put a little
Peter Pan |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: known type conveys an image of that form so majestically made to
Minna, but which to the eyes of a man would have eclipsed in womanly
grace the fairest of Raphael's creations. That painter of heaven has
ever put a tranquil joy, a loving sweetness, into the lines of his
angelic conceptions; but what soul, unless it contemplated Seraphitus
himself, could have conceived the ineffable emotions imprinted on his
face? Who would have divined, even in the dreams of artists, where all
things become possible, the shadow cast by some mysterious awe upon
that brow, shining with intellect, which seemed to question Heaven and
to pity Earth? The head hovered awhile disdainfully, as some majestic
bird whose cries reverberate on the atmosphere, then bowed itself
Seraphita |
