| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Passion in the Desert by Honore de Balzac: cannon; for at this time Bonaparte was traversing Egypt.
This thought gave him new life. The palm tree seemed to bend with the
weight of the ripe fruit. He shook some of it down. When he tasted
this unhoped-for manna, he felt sure that the palms had been
cultivated by a former inhabitant--the savory, fresh meat of the dates
were proof of the care of his predecessor. He passed suddenly from
dark despair to an almost insane joy. He went up again to the top of
the hill, and spent the rest of the day in cutting down one of the
sterile palm trees, which the night before had served him for shelter.
A vague memory made him think of the animals of the desert; and in
case they might come to drink at the spring, visible from the base of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Mountains by Stewart Edward White: us to what we should see. Always we descended into
the velvet blackness of the abyss, the canon walls rising
steadily above us shutting out even the dim illumination
of the stars. From time to time our driver, desperately
scared, jerked out cheering bits of information.
"My eyes ain't what they was. For the Lord's
sake keep a-lookin', boys."
"That nigh hoss is deef. There don't seem to be
no use saying WHOA to her."
"Them brakes don't hold fer sour peanuts. I been
figgerin' on tackin' on a new shoe for a week."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane: t' amputate 'm, an' Bill, he raised a heluva row, I
hear. He's a funny feller."
The din in front swelled to a tremendous
chorus. The youth and his fellows were frozen
to silence. They could see a flag that tossed in
the smoke angrily. Near it were the blurred and
agitated forms of troops. There came a turbulent
stream of men across the fields. A battery chang-
ing position at a frantic gallop scattered the
stragglers right and left.
A shell screaming like a storm banshee went
The Red Badge of Courage |
