| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald: had strolled for several miles along a road that was new to him,
and then through a wood on bad advice from a colored woman ...
losing himself entirely. A passing storm decided to break out,
and to his great impatience the sky grew black as pitch and the
rain began to splatter down through the trees, become suddenly
furtive and ghostly. Thunder rolled with menacing crashes up the
valley and scattered through the woods in intermittent batteries.
He stumbled blindly on, hunting for a way out, and finally,
through webs of twisted branches, caught sight of a rift in the
trees where the unbroken lightning showed open country. He rushed
to the edge of the woods and then hesitated whether or not to
This Side of Paradise |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James: the garden of the vicarage. This small domain, which her young
friend had never seen, bloomed in Mrs. Jordan's discourse like a
new Eden, and she converted the past into a bank of violets by the
tone in which she said "Of course you always knew my one passion!"
She obviously met now, at any rate, a big contemporary need,
measured what it was rapidly becoming for people to feel they could
trust her without a tremor. It brought them a peace that--during
the quarter of an hour before dinner in especial--was worth more to
them than mere payment could express. Mere payment, none the less,
was tolerably prompt; she engaged by the month, taking over the
whole thing; and there was an evening on which, in respect to our
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: her, the count left more than one Argus, whose incessant spying proved
his shameful distrust.
In spite of the attention the countess now gave to the slightest
noise, she heard nothing more. The count had, in fact, entered a long
gallery leading from his room which continued down the western wing of
the castle. Cardinal d'Herouville, his great-uncle, a passionate lover
of the works of printing, had there collected a library as interesting
for the number as for the beauty of its volumes, and prudence had
caused him to build into the walls one of those curious inventions
suggested by solitude or by monastic fears. A silver chain set in
motion, by means of invisible wires, a bell placed at the bed's head
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