| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Daisy Miller by Henry James: This lady looked at them a moment through her eyeglass, and then she said:
"That's what makes you so pensive in these days, eh?"
"I had not the least idea I was pensive," said the young man.
"You are very much preoccupied; you are thinking of something."
"And what is it," he asked, "that you accuse me of thinking of?"
"Of that young lady's--Miss Baker's, Miss Chandler's--what's her name?--
Miss Miller's intrigue with that little barber's block."
"Do you call it an intrigue," Winterbourne asked--"an affair that goes
on with such peculiar publicity?"
"That's their folly," said Mrs. Costello; "it's not their merit."
"No," rejoined Winterbourne, with something of that pensiveness
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott: understand its full merit, I felt it absolutely necessary to be
informed of the subject."
"That is the very thing I complain of," answered Tinto; "you
have accustomed yourself so much to these creeping twilight
details of yours, that you are become incapable of receiving that
instant and vivid flash of conviction which darts on the mind
from seeing the happy and expressive combinations of a single
scene, and which gathers from the position, attitude, and
countenance of the moment, not only the history of the past lives
of the personages represented, and the nature of the business on
which they are immediately engaged, but lifts even the veil of
The Bride of Lammermoor |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Octopus by Frank Norris: succeeding railway commission, before the desired low rates
should be secured; that the present Board of Commissioners was
only the beginning and that too great results were not expected
from them. All this he contrived to mention casually, in the
talk, as if it were a foregone conclusion, a matter understood by
all.
As the speech continued, the eyes of the ranchers around the
table were fixed with growing attention upon this well-dressed,
city-bred young man, who spoke so fluently and who told them of
their own intentions. A feeling of perplexity began to spread,
and the first taint of distrust invaded their minds.
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