| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: festivities and vanities of court life. Like most spoiled children,
she tyrannized over those who loved her, and kept her blandishments
for those who were indifferent. Her faults grew with her growth, and
her parents were to gather the bitter fruits of this disastrous
education. At the age of nineteen Emilie de Fontaine had not yet been
pleased to make a choice from among the many young men whom her
father's politics brought to his entertainments. Though so young, she
asserted in society all the freedom of mind that a married woman can
enjoy. Her beauty was so remarkable that, for her, to appear in a room
was to be its queen; but, like sovereigns, she had no friends, though
she was everywhere the object of attentions to which a finer nature
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Silas Marner by George Eliot: otherwise he might have gone, as Mr. Crackenthorp and Mr. Osgood
certainly would, to look on at the wedding-feast which he had
ordered at the Rainbow, naturally feeling a great interest in the
weaver who had been wronged by one of his own family.
"I could ha' wished Nancy had had the luck to find a child like
that and bring her up," said Priscilla to her father, as they sat
in the gig; "I should ha' had something young to think of then,
besides the lambs and the calves."
"Yes, my dear, yes," said Mr. Lammeter; "one feels that as one
gets older. Things look dim to old folks: they'd need have some
young eyes about 'em, to let 'em know the world's the same as it
Silas Marner |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey: of little Fay's trail. All the way down the knoll, through the
shrubbery, round and round a cottonwood, Fay's vagrant fancy left
records of her sweet musings and innocent play. Long had she
lingered round a bird-nest to leave therein the gaudy wing of a
butterfly. Long had she played beside the running stream sending
adrift vessels freighted with pebbly cargo. Then she had wandered
through the deep grass, her tiny feet scarcely turning a fragile
blade, and she had dreamed beside some old faded flowers. Thus
her steps led her into the broad lane. The little dimpled
imprints of her bare feet showed clean-cut in the dust they went
a little way down the lane; and then, at a point where they
Riders of the Purple Sage |
