| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Father Sergius by Leo Tolstoy: common people aside, how the ladies pointed out the monks to one
another--especially himself and a monk noted for his good looks.
He tried as it were to keep his mind in blinkers, to see nothing
but the light of the candles on the altar-screen, the icons, and
those conducting the service. He tried to hear nothing but the
prayers that were being chanted or read, to feel nothing but
self-oblivion in consciousness of the fulfilment of duty--a
feeling he always experienced when hearing or reciting in advance
the prayers he had so often heard.
So he stood, crossing and prostrating himself when necessary, and
struggled with himself, now giving way to cold condemnation and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Distinguished Provincial at Paris by Honore de Balzac: on the boulevard on somebody's feet; here, however, without a pair of
feet in them, they tell a pretty plain tale. I am fifty years old, and
that is the truth; I ought to be as blind as Cupid himself."
There was no excuse for this mean-spirited monologue. The boots were
not the high-lows at present in vogue, which an unobservant man may be
allowed to disregard up to a certain point. They were the
unmistakable, uncompromising hessians then prescribed by fashion, a
pair of extremely elegant betasseled boots, which shone in glistening
contrast against tight-fitting trousers invariably of some light
color, and reflected their surroundings like a mirror. The boots
stared the honest silk-mercer out of countenance, and, it must be
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: must expect them in their works to follow profit only, and we
must expect in consequence, if he will pardon me the
epithets, a slovenly, base, untrue, and empty literature. Of
that writer himself I am not speaking: he is diligent,
clean, and pleasing; we all owe him periods of entertainment,
and he has achieved an amiable popularity which he has
adequately deserved. But the truth is, he does not, or did
not when he first embraced it, regard his profession from
this purely mercenary side. He went into it, I shall venture
to say, if not with any noble design, at least in the ardour
of a first love; and he enjoyed its practice long before he
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