| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Forged Coupon by Leo Tolstoy: They surrounded on three sides the spot where
Gerassim was sitting and seized the man. He did
not deny anything; but, being drunk, told them at
once how Ivan Mironov had given him plenty of
drink, and induced him to steal the horses; he
also said that Ivan Mironov had promised to come
that night in order to take the horses away. The
peasants left the horses and Gerassim in the ra-
vine, and hiding behind the trees prepared to lie in
ambush for Ivan Mironov. When it grew dark,
they heard a whistle. Gerassim answered it with
The Forged Coupon |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Moon-Face and Other Stories by Jack London: He answered her by the warm light in his eyes.
All things tended to key them to an exquisite pitch--the movement of their
bodies, at one with the moving bodies of the animals beneath them; the gently
stimulated blood caressing the flesh through and through with the soft vigors
of health; the warm air fanning their faces, flowing over the skin with balmy
and tonic touch, permeating them and bathing them, subtly, with faint,
sensuous delight; and the beauty of the world, more subtly still, flowing upon
them and bathing them in the delight that is of the spirit and is personal and
holy, that is inexpressible yet communicable by the flash of an eye and the
dissolving of the veils of the soul.
So looked they at each other, the horses bounding beneath them, the spring of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: with indignant passion; and here, after a hundred and seventy
years, Protestant is still Protestant, Catholic still Catholic, in
mutual toleration and mild amity of life. But the race of man,
like that indomitable nature whence it sprang, has medicating
virtues of its own; the years and seasons bring various harvests;
the sun returns after the rain; and mankind outlives secular
animosities, as a single man awakens from the passions of a day.
We judge our ancestors from a more divine position; and the dust
being a little laid with several centuries, we can see both sides
adorned with human virtues and fighting with a show of right.
I have never thought it easy to be just, and find it daily even
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