| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: with tradesmen's bills had forced his reasoning into a new
channel of comparison: he had begun to consider from a new point
of view what was necessary and unnecessary in goods ordered,
and to see that there must be some change of habits. How could
such a change be made without Rosamond's concurrence? The immediate
occasion of opening the disagreeable fact to her was forced upon him.
Having no money, and having privately sought advice as to what security
could possibly be given by a man in his position, Lydgate had offered
the one good security in his power to the less peremptory creditor,
who was a silversmith and jeweller, and who consented to take on himself
the upholsterer's credit also, accepting interest for a given term.
Middlemarch |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair: upon the hills; all her frame would quiver and throb with them--it was
as if some dreadful thing rose up within her and took possession of her,
torturing her, tearing her. This thing had been wont to set Jurgis
quite beside himself; but now he stood with his lips set tightly and
his hands clenched--she might weep till she killed herself, but she
should not move him this time--not an inch, not an inch. Because the
sounds she made set his blood to running cold and his lips to quivering
in spite of himself, he was glad of the diversion when Teta Elzbieta,
pale with fright, opened the door and rushed in; yet he turned upon
her with an oath. "Go out!" he cried, "go out!" And then, as she
stood hesitating, about to speak, he seized her by the arm, and half
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Burning Daylight by Jack London: slipped away from him, as did his lazy Western drawl. As his
speech became sharp and nervous, so did his mental processes. In
the swift rush of the game he found less and less time to spend
on being merely good-natured. The change marked his face itself.
The lines grew sterner. Less often appeared the playful curl of
his lips, the smile in the wrinkling corners of his eyes. The
eyes themselves, black and flashing, like an Indian's, betrayed
glints of cruelty and brutal consciousness of power. His
tremendous vitality remained, and radiated from all his being,
but it was vitality under the new aspect of the man-trampling
man-conqueror. His battles with elemental nature had been, in a
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