| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: deafened my care to possible contradictions. Her spectacles were
at present a direct contradiction; they seemed a negation not only
of new relationships but of every old one as well. I remember
nevertheless that when after a moment she walked beside me on the
grass I found myself nervously hoping she wouldn't as yet at any
rate tell me anything very dreadful; so that to stave off this
danger I harried her with questions about Mrs. Meldrum and, without
waiting for replies, became profuse on the subject of my own
doings. My companion was finely silent, and I felt both as if she
were watching my nervousness with a sort of sinister irony and as
if I were talking to some different and strange person. Flora
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: castle of the Dukes of Vendome, the only spot whence the eye can see
into this enclosure, we think that at a time, difficult now to
determine, this spot of earth must have been the joy of some country
gentleman devoted to roses and tulips, in a word, to horticulture, but
above all a lover of choice fruit. An arbor is visible, or rather the
wreck of an arbor, and under it a table still stands not entirely
destroyed by time. At the aspect of this garden that is no more, the
negative joys of the peaceful life of the provinces may be divined as
we divine the history of a worthy tradesman when we read the epitaph
on his tomb. To complete the mournful and tender impressions which
seize the soul, on one of the walls there is a sundial graced with
La Grande Breteche |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Yates Pride by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: "So that is the reason you always ran away from me, years ago, so
that I never had a chance to ask you?"
"Of course," said Eudora. "No woman of my family ever allows a
declaration which she does not intend to accept. I was always
taught that by my mother."
Then a small but insistent cry rent the air. "The baby is
awake!" cried Eudora, and ran, or, rather, paced swiftly--Eudora
had been taught never to run--and Lawton followed. It was he who
finally quieted the child, holding the little thing in his arms.
But the baby, before that, cried so long and lustily that all the
women in the Glynn house opposite were on the alert, and also
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