| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Deputy of Arcis by Honore de Balzac: under cover of an agency that was fairly avowable, she sheltered
practices more or less shady, on which she continued to bestow an
intelligence and an activity that were really infernal.
"Aunt," said Vautrin, "I have so many things to say to you that I
don't know where to begin."
"I should think so! It is a week since I've seen you."
"In the first place, I must tell you that I have just missed a
splendid chance."
"What sort of chance?" asked Jacqueline.
"In the line of my odious calling. But this time the capture was worth
making. Do you remember that little Prussian engraver about whom I
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: crowded summer, and, until much later, they absorbed me infinitely less
than my personal affairs.
Most of the time I worked. In the early morning the sun threw my shadow
westward as I hurried down the white chasms of lower New York to the
Probity Trust. I knew the other clerks and young bond-salesmen by their
first names, and lunched with them in dark, crowded restaurants on
little pig sausages and mashed potatoes and coffee. I even had a short
affair with a girl who lived in Jersey City and worked in the
accounting department, but her brother began throwing mean looks in my
direction, so when she went on her vacation in July I let it blow
quietly away.
The Great Gatsby |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln: upon this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and
dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war. . .testing whether
that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated. . .
can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place
for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . .
we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead,
who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power
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