| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James: HE could. The great pang was that just thereabouts post-offices
were so awfully thick. She was always seeing him in imagination in
other places and with other girls. But she would defy any other
girl to follow him as she followed. And though they weren't, for
so many reasons, quick at Cocker's, she could hurry for him when,
through an intimation light as air, she gathered that he was
pressed.
When hurry was, better still, impossible, it was because of the
pleasantest thing of all, the particular element of their contact--
she would have called it their friendship--that consisted of an
almost humorous treatment of the look of some of his words. They
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Virginian by Owen Wister: "That's correct." The cow-puncher flushed, but he spoke in his
unvaryingly gentle voice.
"For in New England, you know," pursued Miss Molly, noting his
scarf and clean-shaven chin, and then again steadily meeting his
eye, "gentlemen ask to be presented to ladies before they ask
them to waltz."
He stood a moment before her, deeper and deeper scarlet; and the
more she saw his handsome face, the keener rose her excitement.
She waited for him to speak of the river; for then she was going
to be surprised, and gradually to remember, and finally to be
very nice to him. But he did not wait. "I ask your pardon, lady,"
The Virginian |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: knowledge was to be overlooked. I ranged mountains and deserts for
images and resemblances, and pictured upon my mind every tree of
the forest and flower of the valley. I observed with equal care
the crags of the rock and the pinnacles of the palace. Sometimes I
wandered along the mazes of the rivulet, and sometimes watched the
changes of the summer clouds. To a poet nothing can be useless.
Whatever is beautiful and whatever is dreadful must be familiar to
his imagination; he must be conversant with all that is awfully
vast or elegantly little. The plants of the garden, the animals of
the wood, the minerals of the earth, and meteors of the sky, must
all concur to store his mind with inexhaustible variety; for every
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