| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Death of the Lion by Henry James: movement had been interpreted by his visitor as an invitation to
sink sympathetically into a wicker chair that stood hard by, and
while Mr. Morrow so settled himself I felt he had taken official
possession and that there was no undoing it. One had heard of
unfortunate people's having "a man in the house," and this was just
what we had. There was a silence of a moment, during which we
seemed to acknowledge in the only way that was possible the
presence of universal fate; the sunny stillness took no pity, and
my thought, as I was sure Paraday's was doing, performed within the
minute a great distant revolution. I saw just how emphatic I
should make my rejoinder to Mr. Pinhorn, and that having come, like
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: stepped up to the portrait. 'Why, this is one of your very best works.
It is the usurer who died a short time ago: yes, it is a most perfect
likeness. You did not stop until you had got into his very eyes. Never
did eyes look as these do now.'
"'Well, I'll see how they look in the fire!' said my father, making a
movement to fling the portrait into the grate.
"'Stop, for Heaven's sake!' exclaimed his friend, restraining him:
'give it to me, rather, if it offends your eyes to such a degree.' My
father resisted, but yielded at length; and the jolly fellow, well
pleased with his acquisition, carried the portrait home with him.
"When he was gone, my father felt more calm. The burden seemed to have
Taras Bulba and Other Tales |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: Since that evening when Lydgate had come down from the billiard
room with Fred Vincy, Mr. Farebrother's thoughts about him had
been rather gloomy. Playing at the Green Dragon once or oftener
might have been a trifle in another man; but in Lydgate it was
one of several signs that he was getting unlike his former self.
He was beginning to do things for which he had formerly even an
excessive scorn. Whatever certain dissatisfactions in marriage,
which some silly tinklings of gossip had given him hints of,
might have to do with this change, Mr. Farebrother felt sure
that it was chiefly connected with the debts which were being
more and more distinctly reported, and he began to fear that any
Middlemarch |
