| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain: Now came a diversion. We heard shrieks and yells,
and soon a woman came running and crying; and see-
ing our group, she flung herself into our midst and
begged for protection. A mob of people came tearing
after her, some with torches, and they said she was a
witch who had caused several cows to die by a strange
disease, and practiced her arts by help of a devil in
the form of a black cat. This poor woman had been
stoned until she hardly looked human, she was so
battered and bloody. The mob wanted to burn her.
Well, now, what do you suppose our master did?
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: memory and reason rose up to silence it before the words were well
uttered, gave her unqualifiable agony. She was raised up and dashed
down again bleeding. The recurrence of the subject forced her, for
however short a time, to open her eyes on what she did not wish to see;
and it had invariably ended in another disappointment. So now again, at
the mere wind of its coming, at the mere mention of his father's name -
who might seem indeed to have accompanied them in their whole moorland
courtship, an awful figure in a wig with an ironical and bitter smile,
present to guilty consciousness - she fled from it head down.
"Ye havena told me yet," she said, "who was it spoke?"
"Your aunt for one," said Archie.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac: world; he would not disoblige me for a million."
"It is a guarantee in itself," thought Birotteau, as he went away full
of gratitude to his old clerk. "Well, a benefit is never lost!" he
continued, philosophizing very wide of the mark. Nevertheless, one
thought embittered his joy. For several days he had prevented his wife
from looking into the ledgers; he had put the business on Celestin's
shoulders and assisted in it himself; he wished, apparently, that his
wife and daughter should be at liberty to take full enjoyment out of
the beautiful appartement he had given them. But the first flush of
happiness over, Madame Birotteau would have died rather than renounce
her right of personally inspecting the affairs of the house,--of
Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |
