| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett: sunshiny air was of some ethereal northern sort, with a cool
freshness as it came over new-fallen snow. The world was filled
with a fragrance of fir-balsam and the faintest flavor of seaweed
from the ledges, bare and brown at low tide in the little harbor.
It was so still and so early that the village was but half awake.
I could hear no voices but those of the birds, small and great,--
the constant song sparrows, the clink of a yellow-hammer over in
the woods, and the far conversation of some deliberate crows. I
saw William Blackett's escaping sail already far from land, and
Captain Littlepage was sitting behind his closed window as I passed
by, watching for some one who never came. I tried to speak to him,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: these, uniting a few yards below the falls, formed a lovely little
river to irrigate the barren, uncultivated valley, and these two hills
he enclosed in a ring fence, and built himself a retreat on the dam,
which he widened to two acres by accumulating above it all the soil
which had to be removed to make a channel for the river and the
irrigation canals.
When the Baron de Watteville thus obtained the lake above his dam he
was owner of the two hills, but not of the upper valley thus flooded,
through which there had been at all times a right-of-way to where it
ends in a horseshoe under the Dent de Vilard. But this ferocious old
man was so widely dreaded, that so long as he lived no claim was urged
Albert Savarus |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Iron Puddler by James J. Davis: boarding-house keeper in the Alabama iron town. So I drew
something from my vest pocket and said:
"This is all I've got left."
The trainman examined it by the dim light at the window. His
eye told him that it was a fine gold watch. "All right," he said
as be pocketed it and went away. I never knew whether I cheated
the brakeman or the brakeman cheated me. The watch wasn't worth
as much as the ride, but the ride wasn't his to sell.
I had bought the watch in Cincinnati. A fake auction in a
pawnshop attracted my attention as I walked along a street near
the depot. The auctioneer was offering a "solid gold, Swiss
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