The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald: from the room.
"If you don't pass it," said the newly arrived Alec as they sat
on the window-seat of Amory's room and mused upon a scheme of
wall decoration, "you're the world's worst goopher. Your stock
will go down like an elevator at the club and on the campus."
"Oh, hell, I know it. Why rub it in?"
"'Cause you deserve it. Anybody that'd risk what you were in line
for ought to be ineligible for Princetonian chairman."
"Oh, drop the subject," Amory protested. "Watch and wait and shut
up. I don't want every one at the club asking me about it, as if
I were a prize potato being fattened for a vegetable show."
 This Side of Paradise |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Passion in the Desert by Honore de Balzac: distinguish the panther from every other feline species.
This tranquil and formidable hostess snored in an attitude as graceful
as that of a cat lying on a cushion. Her blood-stained paws, nervous
and well armed, were stretched out before her face, which rested upon
them, and from which radiated her straight slender whiskers, like
threads of silver.
If she had been like that in a cage, the Provencal would doubtless
have admired the grace of the animal, and the vigorous contrasts of
vivid color which gave her robe an imperial splendor; but just then
his sight was troubled by her sinister appearance.
The presence of the panther, even asleep, could not fail to produce
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Death of the Lion by Henry James: the pitch. His reading of the fond epistle, at any rate, made me
feel as if I were, for the advantage of posterity, in close
correspondence with him - were the distinguished person to whom it
had been affectionately addressed. It was a high distinction
simply to be told such things. The idea he now communicated had
all the freshness, the flushed fairness, of the conception
untouched and untried: it was Venus rising from the sea and before
the airs had blown upon her. I had never been so throbbingly
present at such an unveiling. But when he had tossed the last
bright word after the others, as I had seen cashiers in banks,
weighing mounds of coin, drop a final sovereign into the tray, I
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