| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens: 'The time that has elapsed,' rejoined his son, 'since I began to
know her worth, has flown in such a dream that until now I have
hardly once paused to reflect upon my true position. What is it?
From my childhood I have been accustomed to luxury and idleness,
and have been bred as though my fortune were large, and my
expectations almost without a limit. The idea of wealth has been
familiarised to me from my cradle. I have been taught to look upon
those means, by which men raise themselves to riches and
distinction, as being beyond my heeding, and beneath my care. I
have been, as the phrase is, liberally educated, and am fit for
nothing. I find myself at last wholly dependent upon you, with no
Barnaby Rudge |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane: They crouched until the ghost-mists of dawn appeared at the
window, drawing close to the panes, and looking in at the
prostrate, heaving body of the mother.
Chapter IV
The babe, Tommie, died. He went away in a white,
insignificant coffin, his small waxen hand clutching a flower that
the girl, Maggie, had stolen from an Italian.
She and Jimmie lived.
The inexperienced fibres of the boy's eyes were hardened at an
early age. He became a young man of leather. He lived some red
years without laboring. During that time his sneer became chronic.
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: forced its way, after escaping from the long avenue cut by its waters
in an undulating line through the forest,--a fluvial pathway flanked
by aged firs and roofed with strong-ribbed arches like those of a
cathedral. Looking back from that vantage-ground, the whole extent of
the fiord could be seen at a glance, with the open sea sparkling on
the horizon beyond it like a burnished blade.
At this moment the mist, rolling away, left the sky blue and clear.
Among the valleys and around the trees flitted the shining fragments,
--a diamond dust swept by the freshening breeze. The torrent rolled on
toward them; along its length a vapor rose, tinted by the sun with
every color of his light; the decomposing rays flashing prismatic
Seraphita |
