| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mucker by Edgar Rice Burroughs: behind the building. It was closed by a heavy door covered
with sheet iron and fastened by several bolts and a thick,
strong bar. There were no windows in the rear wall. From
that side the bank appeared almost impregnable to silent
assault.
Inside everything was primitive and Billy found himself
wondering how a week passed without seeing a bank robbery
in the town. Possibly the strong rear defenses and the armed
guard in front accounted for it.
Satisfied with what he had learned he passed out onto the
sidewalk and crossed the street to a saloon. Some soldiers and
 The Mucker |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: the ancient and magnificent mansions of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. As
she made her way through the stately corridors, the handsome
staircases, the vast drawing-rooms--full of flowers, though it was in
the depth of winter, and decorated with the taste peculiar to women
born to opulence or to the elegant habits of the aristocracy,
Augustine felt a terrible clutch at her heart; she coveted the secrets
of an elegance of which she had never had an idea; she breathed in an
air of grandeur which explained the attraction of the house for her
husband. When she reached the private rooms of the Duchess she was
filled with jealousy and a sort of despair, as she admired the
luxurious arrangement of the furniture, the draperies and the
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: of the valley, where the eye could rove at will. Following the
instincts of her thought, Gabrielle could either enter the solitude of
a narrow space, seeing naught but the thick green and the blue of the
sky above the tree-tops, or she could hover above a glorious prospect,
letting her eyes follow those many-shaded green lines, from the
brilliant colors of the foreground to the pure tones of the horizon on
which they lost themselves, sometimes in the blue ocean of the
atmosphere, sometimes in the cumuli that floated above it.
Watched over by her grandmother and served by her former nurse,
Gabrielle Beauvouloir never left this modest home except for the
parish church, the steeple of which could be seen at the summit of the
|