| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: stood the old citizen, wrapped in a wide gown, his gray periwig
exchanged for a nightcap, which was thrust back from his
forehead, and his silk stockings hanging about his legs. He
supported himself on his polished cane in a fit of convulsive
merriment, which manifested itself on his solemn old features
like a funny inscription on a tombstone. Then Robin seemed to
hear the voices of the barbers, of the guests of the inn, and of
all who had made sport of him that night. The contagion was
spreading among the multitude, when all at once, it seized upon
Robin, and he sent forth a shout of laughter that echoed through
the street,--every man shook his sides, every man emptied his
The Snow Image |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: looking for the scaffold or the plantations. And while
the good work was going forward in the Grassmarket,
idlers in Greyfriars might have heard the throb of the
military drums that drowned the voices of the martyrs.
Nor is this all: for down in the corner farthest from Sir
George, there stands a monument dedicated, in uncouth
Covenanting verse, to all who lost their lives in that
contention. There is no moorsman shot in a snow shower
beside Irongray or Co'monell; there is not one of the two
hundred who were drowned off the Orkneys; nor so much as
a poor, over-driven, Covenanting slave in the American
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James: experience about to relinquish, suffused and coloured it as a
picture that she should keep and that, describe it as she might, no
one but herself would ever really see. Moreover she had no desire
whatever to make Mr. Mudge jealous; there would be no amusement in
it, for the amusement she had lately known had spoiled her for
lower pleasures. There were even no materials for it. The odd
thing was how she never doubted that, properly handled, his passion
was poisonable; what had happened was that he had cannily selected
a partner with no poison to distil. She read then and there that
she should never interest herself in anybody as to whom some other
sentiment, some superior view, wouldn't be sure to interfere for
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