| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Door in the Wall, et. al. by H. G. Wells: it wasn't for Carnaby, but for the garden, for the beautiful
afternoon I had hoped for, for the sweet friendly women and the
waiting playfellows and the game I had hoped to learn again, that
beautiful forgotten game . . . . .
"I believed firmly that if I had not told-- . . . . . I had
bad times after that--crying at night and woolgathering by day.
For two terms I slackened and had bad reports. Do you remember?
Of course you would! It was YOU--your beating me in
mathematics that brought me back to the grind again."
III
For a time my friend stared silently into the red heart of the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Mother by Owen Wister: accustomed to this appellation, I never came to feel that it completely
described me. In passing Tiffany's window twice each day (for my habit
was to walk to and from Nassau Street) I remember that seeing a
thousand-dollar clock exposed for sale caused me annoyance. Of course my
salary as a clerk brought me into no unfavourable comparison with the
clock; and I doubt if I could make you understand my sometimes feeling
when I passed Tiffany's window that I should like to smash the clock."
"I met Ethel frequently in society, dancing with her, and sitting next
her at dinners. And by the time I had dined at her own house, and walked
several afternoons with her, my lot as a six-hundred-dollar clerk began
to seem very sad to me. I wrote verses about it, and about other subjects
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: always more wronged than a man, and there were conditions when the
least she could have got off with was more than the most he could
have to bear. He was sure this rare creature wouldn't have got off
with the least. He was awestruck at the thought of such a
surrender - such a prostration. Moulded indeed she had been by
powerful hands, to have converted her injury into an exaltation so
sublime. The fellow had only had to die for everything that was
ugly in him to be washed out in a torrent. It was vain to try to
guess what had taken place, but nothing could be clearer than that
she had ended by accusing herself. She absolved him at every
point, she adored her very wounds. The passion by which he had
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