| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: and by appearing to recognise me and smile. She leaned back in her
chair in luxurious ease: I had from the first become aware that
the way she fingered her pearls was a sharp image of the wedded
state. Nothing of old had seemed wanting to her assurance, but I
hadn't then dreamed of the art with which she would wear that
assurance as a married woman. She had taken him when everything
had failed; he had taken her when she herself had done so. His
embarrassed eyes confessed it all, confessed the deep peace he
found in it. They only didn't tell me why he had not written to
me, nor clear up as yet a minor obscurity. Flora after a while
again lifted the glass from the ledge of the box and elegantly
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas: interposed between her father and her friend.
Gryphus then understood the danger with which he had been
threatened, and he broke out in a volley of the most
terrible abuse.
"Indeed," said Cornelius to him, "you must be a very mean
and spiteful fellow to rob a poor prisoner of his only
consolation, a tulip bulb."
"For shame, my father," Rosa chimed in, "it is indeed a
crime you have committed here."
"Ah, is that you, my little chatter-box?" the old man cried,
boiling with rage and turning towards her; "don't you meddle
The Black Tulip |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Adieu by Honore de Balzac: the fatal river, formed an ocean of heads intermingled with fires and
huts,--a living sea, swayed by motions that were almost imperceptible,
and giving forth a murmuring sound that rose at times to frightful
outbursts. Driven by famine and despair, these poor wretches must have
rifled the carriage before de Sucy reached it. The old general and his
young wife, whom he had left lying in piles of clothes and wrapped in
mantles and pelisses, were now on the snow, crouching before the fire.
One door of the carriage was already torn off.
No sooner did the men about the fire hear the tread of the major's
horse than a hoarse cry, the cry of famine, arose,--
"A horse! a horse!"
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