| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: shadow of apprehension was on his face again, not now a look of
fixed foreboding, but a shifting vigilance of lips and eyes that
gave her the sense of his feeling himself invisibly surrounded.
Her hand shook so that she could hardly give him the clipping.
"This article--from the 'Waukesha Sentinel'--that a man named
Elwell has brought suit against you--that there was something
wrong about the Blue Star Mine. I can't understand more than
half."
They continued to face each other as she spoke, and to her
astonishment, she saw that her words had the almost immediate
effect of dissipating the strained watchfulness of his look.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: his three servants, Maitre Cornelius lived alone in his house with the
old Flemish woman, his sister. He obtained permission from the king to
use state couriers for his private affairs, sold his mules to a
muleteer of the neighborhood, and lived from that moment in the
deepest solitude, seeing no one but the king, doing his business by
means of Jews, who, shrewd calculators, served him well in order to
gain his all-powerful protection.
Some time after this affair, the king himself procured for his old
"torconnier" a young orphan in whom he took an interest. Louis XI.
called Maitre Cornelius familiarly by that obsolete term, which, under
the reign of Saint-Louis, meant a usurer, a collector of imposts, a
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: exhaustion, sank back and hid his face in the pillow. Dorcas wept
when her fears were thus confirmed; but the shock, as it had been
long anticipated. was on that account the less violent.
"You dug a grave for my poor father in the wilderness, Reuben?"
was the question by which her filial piety manifested itself.
"My hands were weak; but I did what I could," replied the youth
in a smothered tone. "There stands a noble tombstone above his
head; and I would to Heaven I slept as soundly as he!"
Dorcas, perceiving the wildness of his latter words, inquired no
further at the time; but her heart found ease in the thought that
Roger Malvin had not lacked such funeral rites as it was possible
Mosses From An Old Manse |
