| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Virginian by Owen Wister: gold miner, an escaped stage robber, and a Mexican bandit; while
Mrs. Flynt feared she had married a Mormon.
Along Bear Creek, however, Molly and her "rustler" took a ride
soon after her return. They were neither married nor engaged, and
she was telling him about Vermont.
"I never was there," said he. "Never happened to strike in that
direction."
"What decided your direction?"
"Oh, looking for chances. I reckon I must have been more
ambitious than my brothers--or more restless. They stayed around
on farms. But I got out. When I went back again six years
The Virginian |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Octopus by Frank Norris: looking out aimlessly over the Seed ranch, wondering, bewildered.
Farther than this the influence never drew him, but up to this
point--the line of pear trees--it was not to be resisted.
For a time the peculiarity of the affair was of more interest to
Vanamee than even his own distress of spirit, and once or twice
he repeated the attempt, almost experimentally, and invariably
with the same result: so soon as he seemed to hold Angele in the
grip of his mind, he was moved to turn about toward the north,
and hurry toward the pear trees on the crest of the hill that
over-looked the little valley.
But Vanamee's unhappiness was too keen this night for him to
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac: soul, whom God would surely forgive for mingling human and sacred
love? One had led to the other. Was there some transposition of the
vital force in her involving her in inevitable suffering? Everything
is doubtful and obscure in a case which science scorns to study,
regarding the subject as too immoral and too compromising, as if the
physician and the writer, the priest and the political student, were
not above all suspicion. However, a doctor who was stopped by death
had the courage to begin an investigation which he left unfinished.
Perhaps the dark depression to which Esther fell a victim, and which
cast a gloom over her happy life, was due to all these causes; and
perhaps, unable as she was to suspect them herself, she suffered as
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