| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce: shoulder, the hammer resting on the forearm thrown straight
across the chest -- a formal and unnatural position,
enforcing an erect carriage of the body. It did not appear
to be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at
the center of the bridge; they merely blockaded the two ends
of the foot planking that traversed it.
Beyond one of the sentinels nobody was in sight; the railroad
ran straight away into a forest for a hundred yards, then,
curving, was lost to view. Doubtless there was an outpost
farther along. The other bank of the stream was open ground
-- a gentle slope topped with a stockade of vertical tree
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: wall between the stove and the window on which were ranged books of
all sizes, "behold him! here are seventeen works from his pen, of
which one, his 'Philosophical and Mineralogical Works,' published in
1734, is in three folio volumes. These productions, which prove the
incontestable knowledge of Swedenborg, were given to me by Monsieur
Seraphitus, his cousin and the father of Seraphita.
"In 1740," continued Monsieur Becker, after a slight pause,
"Swedenborg fell into a state of absolute silence, from which he
emerged to bid farewell to all his earthly occupations; after which
his thoughts turned exclusively to the Spiritual Life. He received the
first commands of heaven in 1745, and he thus relates the nature of
Seraphita |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An Unsocial Socialist by George Bernard Shaw: consciousness of having lost his head and acted foolishly in the
afternoon. Sir Charles did not pretend to ignore the suspense
they were all in pending intelligence of the journey to London;
he ate and drank and said nothing. Agatha, disgusted with herself
and with Gertrude, and undecided whether to be disgusted with
Trefusis or to trust him affectionately, followed the example of
her host. After dinner she accompanied him in a series of songs
by Schubert. This proved an aggravation instead of a relief. Sir
Charles, excelling in the expression of melancholy, preferred
songs of that character; and as his musical ideas, like those of
most Englishmen, were founded on what he had heard in church in
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