| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Breaking Point by Mary Roberts Rinehart: relation to what had gone before or what came after.
But the ranch house had been different. The pictures were mostly
superimposed on it; it was their background. Himself standing on
the mountain looking down at it, and his father pointing to it;
the tutor who was afraid of horses, sitting at a big table in a
great wood-ceiled and wood-paneled room; a long gallery or porch
along one side of the building and rooms added on to the house so
that one had to go along the gallery to reach them; a gun-room
full of guns.
When, much later, Dick was able calmly to review that day, he found
his recollection of it confused by the events that followed, but one
The Breaking Point |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death by Patrick Henry: Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves
to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our
petition comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and
darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and
reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that
force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves,
sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation; the last arguments to
which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if
its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other
possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of
the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: open country, or among the tall reeds of the marshes. The boat was
full.
"What are you waiting for? Let us put off!" they cried.
Just at that moment a man appeared a few paces from the jetty, to the
surprise of the skipper, who had heard no sound of footsteps. The
traveler seemed to have sprung up from the earth, like a peasant who
had laid himself down on the ground to wait till the boat should
start, and had slept till the sound of the horn awakened him. Was he a
thief? or some one belonging to the custom-house or the police?
As soon as the man appeared on the jetty to which the boat was moored,
seven persons who were standing in the stern of the shallop hastened
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