| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson: He sat down to wait, laying his watch before him on the
table. She had called him Harry: that should be enough, he
thought, to fill the day with sunshine; and yet somehow the
sight of that disordered room still poisoned his enjoyment.
The door of the bed-chamber stood gaping open; and though he
turned aside his eyes as from a sacrilege, he could not but
observe the bed had not been slept in. He was still
pondering what this should mean, still trying to convince
himself that all was well, when the moving needle of his
watch summoned him to set forth without delay. He was before
all things a man of his word; ran round to Southampton Row to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Rezanov by Gertrude Atherton: fire he was shrewder than the soberest.
He listened with deep satisfaction to the Cham-
berlain's account of his success with the Californi-
ans and his glowing pictures of the country, nod-
ding every few moments with emphatic approval.
But as the story finished his wonderful eyes were
two bubbling springs of humor, and Rezanov, who
knew him well, recrossed his legs nervously.
"What is it?" he asked. "What have I done
now? Remember that you have been in this busi-
ness for sixteen years, and I one--"
Rezanov |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: morrow, and spent the money in a score of different ways. Then came
domestic details, lamentations over the excessive dearness of
potatoes, or the length of the winter and the high price of block
fuel, together with forcible representations of amounts owing to the
baker, ending in an acrimonious dispute, in the course of which such
couples reveal their characters in picturesque language. As I
listened, I could make their lives mine, I felt their rags on my back,
I walked with their gaping shoes on my feet; their cravings, their
needs, had all passed into my soul, or my soul had passed into theirs.
It was the dream of a waking man. I waxed hot with them over the
foreman's tyranny, or the bad customers that made them call again and
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