| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: month. It even happened that, seeing her home at such times, he
occasionally went in with her to finish, as he called it, the
evening, and, the better to make his point, sat down to the frugal
but always careful little supper that awaited his pleasure. His
point was made, he thought, by his not eternally insisting with her
on himself; made for instance, at such hours, when it befell that,
her piano at hand and each of them familiar with it, they went over
passages of the opera together. It chanced to be on one of these
occasions, however, that he reminded her of her not having answered
a certain question he had put to her during the talk that had taken
place between them on her last birthday. "What is it that saves
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas: all day, not in studying the heavens like an astronomer, or
in gazing on the water like an angler, or even in enjoying
the privilege of observing the country around him, but all
his monotonous life was passed in watching his
white-bellied, black-clawed fellow insect, four or five
leagues distant from him. At length I felt a desire to study
this living chrysalis more closely, and to endeavor to
understand the secret part played by these insect-actors
when they occupy themselves simply with pulling different
pieces of string."
"And are you going there?"
The Count of Monte Cristo |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: "Have I vexed you?" asked the physician to the Duchess. "I should be
in despair. Your words are like a magic wand. They unlock the pigeon-
holes of my brain, and let out new ideas, vivified by this sublime
music."
"No," replied she, "you have praised our great composer after your own
fashion. Rossini will be a success with you, for the sake of his witty
and sensual gifts. Let us hope that he may find some noble souls, in
love with the ideal--which must exist in your fruitful land,--to
appreciate the sublimity, the loftiness, of such music. Ah, now we
have the famous duet, between Elcia and Osiride!" she exclaimed, and
she went on, taking advantage of the triple salvo of applause which
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