| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: of rage caused by wounded vanity, or in a crisis brought on by
creditors, he leaps the Eurotas and attains to some great triumph of
his intellect. After which, weary, and surprised at having created
anything, he drops back into the marasmus of Parisian dissipation;
wants become formidable; he has no strength to face them; and then he
comes down from his pedestal and compromises.
Influenced by a false idea of his grandeur and of his future,--the
measure of which he reckons on the noble success of one of his former
comrades, one of the few great talents brought to light by the
revolution of July,--he allows himself, in order to get out of his
embarrassments, certain laxities of principle with persons who are
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Records of a Family of Engineers by Robert Louis Stevenson: atmosphere suddenly became thick and foggy. But as the
SMEATON, our present tender, was moored at no great distance
from the rock, the crew on board continued blowing with a
horn, and occasionally fired a musket, so that the boats got
to the ship without difficulty.
[Thursday, 20th Aug.]
The wind this morning inclined from the north-east, and
the sky had a heavy and cloudy appearance, but the sea was
smooth, though there was an undulating motion on, the surface,
which indicated easterly winds, and occasioned a slight surf
upon the rock. But the boats found no difficulty in landing
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Ferber: I promise, dreamily, my last typewritten sentence
still running through my head. The gravy seems to have
got into the heroine's calm gray eyes. What heroine
could remain calm-eyed when her creator's mind is filled
with roast beef? A half-hour elapses before I get back
on the track. Then appears the hero--a tall blond youth,
fair to behold. I make him two yards high, and endow him
with a pair of clothing-advertisement shoulders.
There assails my nostrils a fearful smell of
scorching. The roast! A wild rush into the kitchen. I
fling open the oven door. The roast is mahogany-colored,
|
