| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: There were sparks of recognition that are not forgotten yet.
For at first, with an amazed and overwhelming indignation
At a measureless malfeasance that obscurely willed it thus,
They were lost and unacquainted -- till they found themselves in others,
Who had groped as they were groping where dim ways were perilous.
There were lives that were as dark as are the fears and intuitions
Of a child who knows himself and is alone with what he knows;
There were pensioners of dreams and there were debtors of illusions,
All to fail before the triumph of a weed that only grows.
There were thirsting heirs of golden sieves that held not wine or water,
And had no names in traffic or more value there than toys:
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Distinguished Provincial at Paris by Honore de Balzac: to the other camp. Merlin and Martainville took him aside and begged
him, as his friends, to remember that he would simply hand Coralie
over to the tender mercies of the Liberal papers, for she would find
no champions on the Royalist and Ministerial side. Her acting was
certain to provoke a hot battle, and the kind of discussion which
every actress longs to arouse.
"You don't understand it in the least," said Martainville; "if she
plays for three months amid a cross-fire of criticism, she will make
thirty thousand francs when she goes on tour in the provinces at the
end of the season; and here are you about to sacrifice Coralie and
your own future, and to quarrel with your own bread and butter, all
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott: she could, "are all these delicacies so totally destroyed that
no scrap can be collected?"
"Collected, my leddy! what wad ye collect out of the sute and
the ass? Ye may gang down yoursell, and look into our kitchen--
the cookmaid in the trembling exies--the gude vivers lying a'
about--beef, capons, and white broth--florentine and flams--bacon
wi' reverence--and a' the sweet confections and whim-whams--ye'll
see them a', my leddy--that is," said he, correcting himself,
"ye'll no see ony of them now, for the cook has soopit them up,
as was weel her part; but ye'll see the white broth where it was
spilt. I pat my fingers in it, and it tastes as like sour milk
The Bride of Lammermoor |
