| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Two Poets by Honore de Balzac: Old Sechard grew uneasy over his son's silence; he would rather have
had stormy argument than a wordless acceptance of the situation.
Chaffering in these sorts of bargains means that a man can look after
his interests. "A man who is ready to pay you anything you ask will
pay nothing," old Sechard was saying to himself. While he tried to
follow his son's train of thought, he went through the list of odds
and ends of plant needed by a country business, drawing David now to a
hot-press, now to a cutting-press, bragging of its usefulness and
sound condition.
"Old tools are always the best tools," said he. "In our line of
business they ought to fetch more than the new, like goldbeaters'
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Chance by Joseph Conrad: was not much disconcerted by this development. "I live a long way
from here," she whispered.
I said perfunctorily, "Do you?" And we remained gazing at each
other. The uniform paleness of her complexion was not that of an
anaemic girl. It had a transparent vitality and at that particular
moment the faintest possible rosy tinge, the merest suspicion of
colour; an equivalent, I suppose, in any other girl to blushing like
a peony while she told me that Captain Anthony had arranged to show
her the ship that morning.
It was easy to understand that she did not want to meet Fyne. And
when I mentioned in a discreet murmur that he had come because of
Chance |
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: 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
harder than I thought. I own I met these Protestants with a
delight and a sense of coming home. I was accustomed to speak
their language, in another and deeper sense of the word than that
which distinguishes between French and English; for the true Babel
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