| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Silas Marner by George Eliot: steel, half sunk in the mud. It was not Silas's tinder-box, for the
only one he had ever had was still standing on his shelf; and the
inference generally accepted was, that the tinder-box in the ditch
was somehow connected with the robbery. A small minority shook
their heads, and intimated their opinion that it was not a robbery
to have much light thrown on it by tinder-boxes, that Master
Marner's tale had a queer look with it, and that such things had
been known as a man's doing himself a mischief, and then setting the
justice to look for the doer. But when questioned closely as to
their grounds for this opinion, and what Master Marner had to gain
by such false pretences, they only shook their heads as before, and
Silas Marner |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: Lightly and at random though she spoke, her manner conveyed
an extraordinary degree of sympathy and desire to befriend.
"Jane Austen? I don't like Jane Austen," said Rachel.
"You monster!" Clarissa exclaimed. "I can only just forgive you.
Tell me why?"
"She's so--so--well, so like a tight plait," Rachel floundered.
"Ah--I see what you mean. But I don't agree. And you won't when
you're older. At your age I only liked Shelley. I can remember
sobbing over him in the garden.
He has outsoared the shadow of our night,
Envy and calumny and hate and pain-- you remember?
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Whirligigs by O. Henry: It was in consequence of these conditions that Hamil-
ton and Avery had filed upon a strip of land about a mile
wide and three miles long, comprising about two thou-
sand acres, it being the excess over complement of the
Elias Denny three-league survey on Chiquito River, in
one of the middle-western counties. This two-thousand-
acre body of land was asserted by them to be vacant land,
and improperly considered a part of the Denny survey.
They based this assertion and their claim upon the land
upon the demonstrated facts that the beginning corner
of the Denny survey was plainly identified; that its field
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