| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: recollected. Elsewhere he is refreshed to see attractive
faces, to remark possible friends; there he scouts the long
streets, with a pang at heart, for the faces and friends that
are no more. Elsewhere he is delighted with the presence of
what is new, there tormented by the absence of what is old.
Elsewhere he is content to be his present self; there he is
smitten with an equal regret for what he once was and for
what he once hoped to be.
He was feeling all this dimly, as he drove from the station,
on his last visit; he was feeling it still as he alighted at
the door of his friend Mr. Johnstone Thomson, W.S., with whom
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: She lived for four years with the Smiths. New
Barns is an isolated farmhouse a mile away from
the road, and she was content to look day after
day at the same fields, hollows, rises; at the trees
and the hedgerows; at the faces of the four men
about the farm, always the same--day after day,
month after month, year after year. She never
showed a desire for conversation, and, as it seemed
to me, she did not know how to smile. Sometimes
of a fine Sunday afternoon she would put on her
best dress, a pair of stout boots, a large grey hat
Amy Foster |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Juana by Honore de Balzac: No more fetes, no more orgies, no more love. All joys, all fortunes
were centred now in the cradle of her child. The tones of that infant
voice made an oasis for her soul in the burning sands of her
existence. That sentiment could not be measured or estimated by any
other. Did it not, in fact, comprise all human sentiments, all
heavenly hopes? La Marana was so resolved not to soil her daughter
with any stain other than that of birth, that she sought to invest her
with social virtues; she even obliged the young father to settle a
handsome patrimony upon the child and to give her his name. Thus the
girl was not know as Juana Marana, but as Juana di Mancini.
Then, after seven years of joy, and kisses, and intoxicating
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