| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: side of his privilege. With habit and repetition he gained to an
extraordinary degree the power to penetrate the dusk of distances
and the darkness of corners, to resolve back into their innocence
the treacheries of uncertain light, the evil-looking forms taken in
the gloom by mere shadows, by accidents of the air, by shifting
effects of perspective; putting down his dim luminary he could
still wander on without it, pass into other rooms and, only knowing
it was there behind him in case of need, see his way about,
visually project for his purpose a comparative clearness. It made
him feel, this acquired faculty, like some monstrous stealthy cat;
he wondered if he would have glared at these moments with large
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: a thing to hang upon breathless. It was there between them--the
tenable ground of what they were to each other: they occupied it
with almost an equal eye upon the tide that threatened, while I from
my mainland tower also made an anguished calculation of the chances.
I think in spite of the menace, they found real beatitudes; so
keenly did they set about the business that it brought them moments
finer than any they could count in the years that were behind them,
the flat and colourless years that were gone. Once or twice the
wild idea even visited me that it was, after all, the projection of
his mother in Somers that had so seized Judy Harbottle, and that the
original was all that was needed to help the happy process of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Paz by Honore de Balzac: vast in Poland), was not of a nature to check his own fancies or those
of his wife. Left to himself he would probably have been ruined before
his marriage. Paz had prevented him from gambling at the Bourse, and
that says all.
Under these circumstances, Thaddeus, feeling that he loved Clementine
in spite of himself, had not the resource of leaving the house and
travelling in other lands to forget his passion. Gratitude, the key-
note of his life, held him bound to that household where he alone
could look after the affairs of the heedless owners. The long absence
of Adam and Clementine had given him peace. But the countess had
returned more lovely than ever, enjoying the freedom which marriage
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