| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: been beaten from field after field into some ultimate fastness, or
lay over-seas in an English prison. In these dark days, when the
watch on the church steeple saw the smoke of burning villages on the
sky-line, or a clump of spears and fluttering pensions drawing nigh
across the plain, these good folk gat them up, with all their
household gods, into the wood, whence, from some high spur, their
timid scouts might overlook the coming and going of the marauders,
and see the harvest ridden down, and church and cottage go up to
heaven all night in flame. It was but an unhomely refuge that the
woods afforded, where they must abide all change of weather and keep
house with wolves and vipers. Often there was none left alive, when
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: Charles Grandet returned to Bordeaux on the "Marie Caroline," a fine
brig belonging to a royalist house of business. He brought with him
nineteen hundred thousand francs worth of gold-dust, from which he
expected to derive seven or eight per cent more at the Paris mint. On
the brig he met a gentleman-in-ordinary to His Majesty Charles X.,
Monsieur d'Aubrion, a worthy old man who had committed the folly of
marrying a woman of fashion with a fortune derived from the West India
Islands. To meet the costs of Madame d'Aubrion's extravagance, he had
gone out to the Indies to sell the property, and was now returning
with his family to France.
Monsieur and Madame d'Aubrion, of the house of d'Aubrion de Buch, a
Eugenie Grandet |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Foolish Virgin by Thomas Dixon: sidewalks five and six blocks ahead.
It was delicious. She had always been the one to
scramble before. Her heart went out in a wave of
tenderness to the man by her side, strong, daring,
masterful, her chevalier, her protector and admirer.
Yes, her admirer! There was no doubt on that
point. The moment he relaxed the tension of his hand
on the wheel, his deep, mysterious eyes beneath the
drooping lids were fixed on hers in open, shameless
admiration. Their cold fire burned into her heart and
thrilled to her finger-tips.
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