| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Padre Ignacio by Owen Wister: worshipers few and seldom varying, a newcomer will gleam out like a new
book to be read. And a trained priest learns to read keenly the faces of
those who assemble to worship under his guidance. But American vagrants,
with no thoughts save of gold-digging, and an overweening illiterate
jargon for speech, had long ceased to interest this priest, even in his
starvation for company and talk from the outside world; and therefore
after the intoning he sat with his homesick thoughts unchanged, to draw
both pain and enjoyment from the music that he had set to the Dixit
Dominus. He listened to the tender chorus that opens William Tell; and,
as the Latin psalm proceeded, pictures of the past rose between him and
the altar. One after another came these strains he had taken from operas
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: voices, still conversing with excessive amity, being heard moving
all round the harbour. It happened more than once that they would
thus perambulate three or four times the distance, each seeing the
other on board his ship out of pure and disinterested affection.
Then, through sheer weariness, or perhaps in a moment of
forgetfulness, they would manage to part from each other somehow,
and by-and-by the planks of our long gangway would bend and creak
under the weight of Mr. B- coming on board for good at last.
On the rail his burly form would stop and stand swaying.
"Watchman!"
"Sir."
The Mirror of the Sea |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: Louis and Marie kneeling on either side of her, like two angels; they
watched the expression of her face, and smiled lovingly at her.
"If only I could take that smile with me!" she said, drying her eyes.
Then she went into the house and took to the bed, which she would only
leave for her coffin.
A week went by, one day exactly like another. Old Annette and Louis
took it in turns to sit up with Mme. Willemsens, never taking their
eyes from the invalid. It was the deeply tragical hour that comes in
all our lives, the hour of listening in terror to every deep breath
lest it should be the last, a dark hour protracted over many days. On
the fifth day of that fatal week the doctor interdicted flowers in the
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