| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton: interruption as a professional story-teller, insisted on returning
to the beginning of her complicated order, and weighing anew, with
an anxious appeal to the butcher's arbitration, the relative
advantages of pork and liver. But even her hesitations, and the
intrusion on them of two or three other customers, were of no
avail, for Mr. Ramy was not among those who entered the shop; and
at last Ann Eliza, ashamed of staying longer, reluctantly claimed
her steak, and walked home through the thickening snow.
Even to her simple judgment the vanity of her hopes was plain,
and in the clear light that disappointment turns upon our actions
she wondered how she could have been foolish enough to suppose
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Letters from England by Elizabeth Davis Bancroft: presence of the Queen, and everybody seemed a little constrained.
She spoke to us all, and very soon such of the gentlemen as were
allowed by their rank, joined us at the round table. Lord Dalhousie
came again to my side and I had as pleasant a conversation with him,
rather SOTTO VOCE, however, as I could have had at a private house.
At half-past ten the Queen rose and shook hands with each lady; we
curtsied profoundly, and she and the Prince departed. We then bade
each other good-night, and found our carriages as soon as we chose.
LETTER: To W.D.B. and A.B.
LONDON, May 16, 1847
My dear Sons: My letters by this steamer will have very little
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling: three hundred years, instead of fifteen, between them. She spoke
with a sort of throaty quaver in her voice which had a soothing
effect, though what she said was anything but soothing. She
pointed out the exceeding folly, not to say meanness, of Pluffles'
conduct, and the smallness of his views. Then he stammered
something about "trusting to his own judgment as a man of the
world;" and this paved the way for what she wanted to say next. It
would have withered up Pluffles had it come from any other woman;
but in the soft cooing style in which Mrs. Hauksbee put it, it only
made him feel limp and repentant--as if he had been in some
superior kind of church. Little by little, very softly and
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