| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Daisy Miller by Henry James: was muffled with tender verdure. Daisy was strolling along
the top of one of those great mounds of ruin that are embanked
with mossy marble and paved with monumental inscriptions.
It seemed to him that Rome had never been so lovely as just then.
He stood, looking off at the enchanting harmony of line and color
that remotely encircles the city, inhaling the softly humid odors,
and feeling the freshness of the year and the antiquity
of the place reaffirm themselves in mysterious interfusion.
It seemed to him also that Daisy had never looked so pretty,
but this had been an observation of his whenever he met her.
Giovanelli was at her side, and Giovanelli, too, wore an aspect
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: almost total absence of intelligence, and a mere brute courage devoid
of generosity. The face was horribly disfigured by a large transversal
scar which had the appearance of a second mouth on the right cheek.
At the age of thirty-three the count, anxious to distinguish himself
in that unhappy religious war the signal for which was given on Saint-
Bartholomew's day, had been grievously wounded at the siege of
Rochelle. The misfortune of this wound increased his hatred against
the partisans of what the language of that day called "the Religion,"
but, by a not unnatural turn of mind, he included in that antipathy
all handsome men. Before the catastrophe, however, he was so
repulsively ugly that no lady had ever been willing to receive him as
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Blix by Frank Norris: time that week. To mail the manuscript meant quite half an hour's
effort. He would have to buy stamps for return postage; a letter
would have to be written, a large envelope procured, the accurate
address ascertained. For the moment his supplement work demanded
his attention. He put off sending the story from day to day. His
interest in it had abated. And for that matter he soon discovered
he had other things to think of.
It had been easy to promise Blix that he would no longer gamble at
his club with the other men of his acquaintance; but it was "death
and the devil," as he told himself, to abide by that promise.
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