| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: worked in, but it was my fault, for in that I met him half-way
and allowed him no chance of good acting). Hereupon I laid my
head upon one side and simulated unholy wisdom, quoting odds and
ends of poker talk, all ludicrously misapplied. My friend kept
his countenance admirably, and well he might, for five minutes
later we arrived, always by the purest of chance, at a place
where we could play cards and also frivol with Louisiana State
Lottery tickets. Would I play?
"Nay," said I, "for to me cards have neither meaning nor
continuity; but let us assume that I am going to play. How would
you and your friends get to work? Would you play a straight
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Pierrette by Honore de Balzac: who wasted her whole fortune. She died of grief and misery two years
later.
Thus the share of her father's property which ought to have come to
Madame Lorrain disappeared almost entirely, being reduced to the small
sum of eight thousand francs. Major Lorrain was killed at the battle
of Montereau, leaving his wife, then twenty-one years of age, with a
little daughter of fourteen months, and no other means than the
pension to which she was entitled and an eventual inheritance from her
late husband's parents, Monsieur and Madame Lorrain, retail
shopkeepers at Pen-Hoel, a village in the Vendee, situated in that
part of it which is called the Marais. These Lorrains, grandfather and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair: their children. The very first Sunday they had all been taken to mass;
and poor as they were, Elzbieta had felt it advisable to invest a little
of her resources in a representation of the babe of Bethlehem, made in
plaster, and painted in brilliant colors. Though it was only a foot high,
there was a shrine with four snow-white steeples, and the Virgin standing
with her child in her arms, and the kings and shepherds and wise men
bowing down before him. It had cost fifty cents; but Elzbieta had a
feeling that money spent for such things was not to be counted too
closely, it would come back in hidden ways. The piece was beautiful
on the parlor mantel, and one could not have a home without some sort
of ornament.
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