| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: having early had strong reason to believe that things were not likely
to be arranged for her peculiar satisfaction, she wasted no time
in astonishment and annoyance at that fact. And she had already
come to take life very much as a comedy in which she had a proud,
nay, a generous resolution not to act the mean or treacherous part.
Mary might have become cynical if she had not had parents whom
she honored, and a well of affectionate gratitude within her, which
was all the fuller because she had learned to make no unreasonable claims.
She sat to-night revolving, as she was wont, the scenes of the day,
her lips often curling with amusement at the oddities to which her fancy
added fresh drollery: people were so ridiculous with their illusions,
Middlemarch |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Astoria by Washington Irving: warrior often has to paint himself from head to foot, and is
extremely capricious and difficult to please, as to the hideous
distribution of streaks and colors. A great part of the morning,
therefore, passed away before there were any signs of the distant
pageant. In the meantime a profound stillness reigned over the
village. Most of the inhabitants had gone forth; others remained
in mute expectation. All sports and occupations were suspended,
excepting that in the lodges the painstaking squaws were silently
busied in preparing the repasts for the warriors.
It was near noon that a mingled sound of voices and rude music,
faintly heard from a distance, gave notice that the procession
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Merry Men by Robert Louis Stevenson: more than a gross hump of shoulders, with now and again a
hemisphere of head. The chair legs were spindled out as long as
stilts, and the boy set perched atop of them, like a cloud, in the
corner of the roof.
It was the boy who took the Doctor's fancy. He had a great arched
skull, the forehead and the hands of a musician, and a pair of
haunting eyes. It was not merely that these eyes were large, or
steady, or the softest ruddy brown. There was a look in them,
besides, which thrilled the Doctor, and made him half uneasy. He
was sure he had seen such a look before, and yet he could not
remember how or where. It was as if this boy, who was quite a
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