| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: composure, slightly pursing her lips and, without being aware of it, so
stiffened and composed the lines of her face in a habit of sternness
that when her husband passed, though he was chuckling at the thought
that Hume, the philosopher, grown enormously fat, had stuck in a bog,
he could not help noting, as he passed, the sternness at the heart of
her beauty. It saddened him, and her remoteness pained him, and he
felt, as he passed, that he could not protect her, and, when he reached
the hedge, he was sad. He could do nothing to help her. He must stand
by and watch her. Indeed, the infernal truth was, he made things worse
for her. He was irritable--he was touchy. He had lost his temper over
the Lighthouse. He looked into the hedge, into its intricacy, its
 To the Lighthouse |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: every morning the bread and other necessaries for the daily
consumption.
La Grande Nanon was perhaps the only human being capable of accepting
willingly the despotism of her master. The whole town envied Monsieur
and Madame Grandet the possession of her. La Grande Nanon, so called
on account of her height, which was five feet eight inches, had lived
with Monsieur Grandet for thirty-five years. Though she received only
sixty francs a year in wages, she was supposed to be one of the
richest serving-women in Saumur. Those sixty francs, accumulating
through thirty-five years, had recently enabled her to invest four
thousand francs in an annuity with Maitre Cruchot. This result of her
 Eugenie Grandet |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Market-Place by Harold Frederic: coming to him in Scotland. The lady who had consented
to marry him had, somehow, omitted to promise that she
would write to him. An arrangement existed, instead,
by which she and his niece Julia were to correspond,
and to fix between themselves the details of the visit
to Morayshire.
Thorpe hardly went to the point of annoyance with
this arrangement. He was conscious of no deep impulse
to write love-letters himself, and there was nothing
in the situation which made his failure to receive love-
letters seem unnatural. The absence of moonshine,
 The Market-Place |