| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy: There was now a distinct manifestation of morning in the air, and
presently the bleared white visage of a sunless winter day emerged
like a dead-born child. The villagers everywhere had already
bestirred themselves, rising at this time of the year at the far
less dreary hour of absolute darkness. It had been above an hour
earlier, before a single bird had untucked his head, that twenty
lights were struck in as many bedrooms, twenty pairs of shutters
opened, and twenty pairs of eyes stretched to the sky to forecast
the weather for the day.
Owls that had been catching mice in the out-houses, rabbits that
had been eating the wintergreens in the gardens, and stoats that
The Woodlanders |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: three months during which I have come and gone, eager and curious,
nothing has appealed to me in the bright, covetous, keen eyes around
me. No voice has thrilled me, no glance has made the world seem
brighter.
Music alone has filled my soul, music alone has at all taken the place
of our friendship. Sometimes, at night, I will linger for an hour by
my window, gazing into the garden, summoning the future, with all it
brings, out of the mystery which shrouds it. There are days too when,
having started for a drive, I get out and walk in the Champs-Elysees,
and picture to myself that the man who is to waken my slumbering soul
is at hand, that he will follow and look at me. Then I meet only
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Blix by Frank Norris: veins. Blix's cheeks were ruddy, her little dark-brown eyes
fairly coruscating with pleasure.
"Condy, isn't it all splendid?" she suddenly burst out.
"I feel regularly bigger," he declared solemnly. "I could do
anything a morning like this."
Then they came to the lake, and to Richardson's, where the farmer
lived who was also the custodian of the lake. The complacent
horse jogged back, and Condy and Blix set about the serious
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