| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: unable to gauge how much of it had been dissolved in soapsuds, or
worked into bread, or milked into the bottom of a pail.
The deluge of sound poured on and on; I never knew what she
found in the shining current of it; I never knew how far it bore
her, or past what happy islands. From the trembling of her face
I could well believe that before the last numbers she had been
carried out where the myriad graves are, into the gray,
nameless burying grounds of the sea; or into some world of death
vaster yet, where, from the beginning of the world, hope has lain
down with hope and dream with dream and, renouncing, slept.
The concert was over; the people filed out of the hall
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen: with that family, and therefore I am a little surprised,
I confess, at so serious an inquiry into her character."
"I dare say you are, and I am sure I do not at all
wonder at it. But if I dared tell you all, you would not be
so much surprised. Mrs. Ferrars is certainly nothing to me
at present--but the time MAY come--how soon it will come
must depend upon herself--when we may be very intimately
connected."
She looked down as she said this, amiably bashful,
with only one side glance at her companion to observe its
effect on her.
Sense and Sensibility |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Distinguished Provincial at Paris by Honore de Balzac: stupidity, and those Turcaret's airs of his, there is all the cunning
of his father the hatter. Did you notice an old soldier of the Empire
in the den at the office? That is Finot's uncle. The uncle is not only
one of the right sort, he has the luck to be taken for a fool; and he
takes all that kind of business upon his shoulders. An ambitious man
in Paris is well off indeed if he has a willing scapegoat at hand. In
public life, as in journalism, there are hosts of emergencies in which
the chiefs cannot afford to appear. If Finot should enter on a
political career, his uncle would be his secretary, and receive all
the contributions levied in his department on big affairs. Anybody
would take Giroudeau for a fool at first sight, but he has just enough
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