| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: married. Of how few people can the same be said!
Little did the Bazins know how much they served us. We were
charged for candles, for food and drink, and for the beds we slept
in. But there was nothing in the bill for the husband's pleasant
talk; nor for the pretty spectacle of their married life. And
there was yet another item unchanged. For these people's
politeness really set us up again in our own esteem. We had a
thirst for consideration; the sense of insult was still hot in our
spirits; and civil usage seemed to restore us to our position in
the world.
How little we pay our way in life! Although we have our purses
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Herodias by Gustave Flaubert: her draperies appear to run into one another. Her arms, her feet, her
clothing even, seemed to emit streams of magnetism, that set the
spectators' blood on fire.
Suddenly the thrilling chords of a harp rang through the hall, and the
throng burst into loud acclamations. All eyes were fixed on Salome,
who paused in her rhythmic dance, placed her feet wide apart, and
without bending the knees, suddenly swayed her lithe body downward, so
that her chin touched the floor; and her whole audience,--the nomads,
accustomed to a life of privation and abstinence, the Roman soldiers,
expert in debaucheries, the avaricious publicans, and even the
crabbed, elderly priests--gazed upon her with dilated nostrils.
Herodias |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: off to us there to their fill; but even while they pretend
to be lost in their fairytale they're steeped in their vision
of the dead restored. He's not reading to her," I declared;
"they're talking of THEM--they're talking horrors!
I go on, I know, as if I were crazy; and it's a wonder I'm not.
What I've seen would have made YOU so; but it has only made
me more lucid, made me get hold of still other things."
My lucidity must have seemed awful, but the charming creatures
who were victims of it, passing and repassing in their
interlocked sweetness, gave my colleague something to hold on by;
and I felt how tight she held as, without stirring in the breath
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