| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson: buffet. On every side, the shadows leaped from their ambush and
fell prone. The day was come, plain and garish; and up the steep
and solitary eastern heaven, the sun, victorious over his
competitors, continued slowly and royally to mount.
Seraphina drooped for a little, leaning on a pine, the shrill joy of
the woodlands mocking her. The shelter of the night, the thrilling
and joyous changes of the dawn, were over; and now, in the hot eye
of the day, she turned uneasily and looked sighingly about her.
Some way off among the lower woods, a pillar of smoke was mounting
and melting in the gold and blue. There, surely enough, were human
folk, the hearth-surrounders. Man's fingers had laid the twigs; it
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Moon-Face and Other Stories by Jack London: "bach'ed." "But how?" And so she continued to put the interrogation, for the
stubborn Scotch blood, though many times removed from Scottish soil, was still
strong in her. And, further, there was need that she should learn how. Her
sister Letty and she had come up from an interior town to the city to make
their way in the world. John Wyman was land-poor. Disastrous business
enterprises had burdened his acres and forced his two girls, Edna and Letty,
into doing something for themselves. A year of school-teaching and of
night-study of shorthand and typewriting had capitalized their city project
and fitted them for the venture, which same venture was turning out anything
but successful. The city seemed crowded with inexperienced stenographers and
typewriters, and they had nothing but their own inexperience to offer. Edna's
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: dessert after the dinner is eaten; the skies of Touraine, where the
autumns are always magnificent, smile upon it. In this hospitable land
the vintagers are fed and lodged in the master's house. The meals are
the only ones throughout the year when these poor people taste
substantial, well-cooked food; and they cling to the custom as the
children of patriarchal families cling to anniversaries. As the time
approaches they flock in crowds to those houses where the masters are
known to treat the laborers liberally. The house is full of people and
of provisions. The presses are open. The country is alive with the
coming and going of itinerant coopers, of carts filled with laughing
girls and joyous husbandmen, who earn better wages than at any other
The Lily of the Valley |
