| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: morrow her greeting expressed the fulness of feelings that remained
unuttered, and from that moment I was initiated into the secrets of
her voice.
That day was to be one of the most decisive of my life. After dinner
we walked on the heights across a barren plain where no herbage grew;
the ground was stony, arid, and without vegetable soil of any kind;
nevertheless a few scrub oaks and thorny bushes straggled there, and
in place of grass, a carpet of crimped mosses, illuminated by the
setting sun and so dry that our feet slipped upon it. I held Madeleine
by the hand to keep her up. Madame de Mortsauf was leading Jacques.
The count, who was in front, suddenly turned round and striking the
The Lily of the Valley |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Awakening & Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin: unable to regain the shore. She did not look back now, but went on
and on, thinking of the blue-grass meadow that she had traversed
when a little child, believing that it had no beginning and no end.
Her arms and legs were growing tired.
She thought of Leonce and the children. They were a part of
her life. But they need not have thought that they could possess
her, body and soul. How Mademoiselle Reisz would have laughed,
perhaps sneered, if she knew! "And you call yourself an artist!
What pretensions, Madame! The artist must possess the courageous
soul that dares and defies."
Exhaustion was pressing upon and overpowering her.
Awakening & Selected Short Stories |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: any more than that stormy lover, Achilles. Ichabod, therefore,
made his advances in a quiet and gently insinuating manner. Under
cover of his character of singing-master, he made frequent visits
at the farmhouse; not that he had anything to apprehend from the
meddlesome interference of parents, which is so often a
stumbling-block in the path of lovers. Balt Van Tassel was an
easy indulgent soul; he loved his daughter better even than his
pipe, and, like a reasonable man and an excellent father, let her
have her way in everything. His notable little wife, too, had
enough to do to attend to her housekeeping and manage her
poultry; for, as she sagely observed, ducks and geese are foolish
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow |
