| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell: voice quavering, for in her heart she was certain Ashley was dead.
"He's just as much alive as you are and it will do you good to have
company. And I'm going to ask Fanny Elsing, too. Mrs. Elsing
begged me to try to do something to arouse her and make her see
people--"
"Oh, but Auntie, it's cruel to force her when poor Dallas has only
been dead--"
"Now, Melly, I shall cry with vexation if you argue with me. I
guess I'm your auntie and I know what's what. And I want a party."
So Aunt Pitty had her party, and, at the last minute, a guest she
did not expect, or desire, arrived. Just when the smell of roast
Gone With the Wind |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The War in the Air by H. G. Wells: the patriotic imagination of every people in the world. Now it
was rumoured the British had an overwhelming gun, now the French
an invincible rifle, now the Japanese a new explosive, now the
Americans a submarine that would drive every ironclad from the
seas. Each time there would be a war panic.
The strength and heart of the nations was given to the thought of
war, and yet the mass of their citizens was a teeming democracy
as heedless of and unfitted for fighting, mentally, morally,
physically, as any population has ever been--or, one ventures to
add, could ever be. That was the paradox of the time. It was a
period altogether unique in the world's history. The apparatus
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Man of Business by Honore de Balzac: bedstead worth three thousand francs, a Boule clock, candelabra in the
four corners of the dining-room, silk curtains, on which Chinese
patience had wrought pictures of birds, and hangings over the doors,
worth more than the portress that opened them.
" 'And that is what /you/ ought to have, my pretty lady.--And that is
what I should like to offer you,' he would conclude. 'I am quite aware
that you scarcely care a bit about me; but, at my age, we cannot
expect too much. Judge how much I love you; I have lent you a thousand
francs. I must confess that, in all my born days, I have not lent
anybody /that/ much----'
"He held out his penny as he spoke, with the important air of a man
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