| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lost Continent by Edgar Rice Burroughs: simultaneous failure of the wireless and the buoyancy
generators, since very shortly after the Coldwater had
dropped so low over the waters that all my attention was
necessarily centered upon the delicate business of settling
upon the waves without breaking my ship's back. With our
buoyancy generators in commission it would have been a
simple thing to enter the water, since then it would have
been but a trifling matter of a forty-five degree dive into
the base of a huge wave. We should have cut into the water
like a hot knife through butter, and have been totally
submerged with scarce a jar--I have done it a thousand
Lost Continent |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: poverty; "take them, he has the ransom of two kings in his pouch."
The three left the atelier and proceeded, talking all the way of art,
to a handsome wooden house standing near the Pont Saint-Michel, whose
window-casings and arabesque decoration amazed Poussin. The embryo
painter soon found himself in one of the rooms on the ground floor
seated, beside a good fire, at a table covered with appetizing dishes,
and, by unexpected good fortune, in company with two great artists who
treated him with kindly attention.
"Young man," said Porbus, observing that he was speechless, with his
eyes fixed on a picture, "do not look at that too long, or you will
fall into despair."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Cousin Pons by Honore de Balzac: insulted. I have never asked anything of any man," he broke out with
an artist's pride. "I have often made myself useful in return for
hospitality. But I have made a mistake, it seems; I am indefinitely
beholden to those who honor me by allowing me to sit at table with
them; my friends, and my relatives. . . . Well and good; I have sent
in my resignation as smellfeast. At home I find daily something which
no other house has offered me--a real friend."
The old artist's power had not failed him; with tone and gesture he
put such bitterness into the words, that the peer of France was struck
by them. He drew Pons aside.
"Come, now, my old friend, what is it? What has hurt you? Could you
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