| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: the prolonged side; it failed him considerably in the central
shades and the parts at the back. But if he sometimes, on his
rounds, was glad of his optical reach, so none the less often the
rear of the house affected him as the very jungle of his prey. The
place was there more subdivided; a large "extension" in particular,
where small rooms for servants had been multiplied, abounded in
nooks and corners, in closets and passages, in the ramifications
especially of an ample back staircase over which he leaned, many a
time, to look far down - not deterred from his gravity even while
aware that he might, for a spectator, have figured some solemn
simpleton playing at hide-and-seek. Outside in fact he might
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Blix by Frank Norris: duties, its gravity, its vague, troublous seriousness, its
inevitable disappointments--was even a little distasteful to them.
Their romance had been hitherto without a flaw; they had been
genuinely happy in little things. It was as well that it should
end that day, in all its pristine sweetness, unsullied by a single
bitter moment, undimmed by the cloud of a single disillusion or
disappointment. Whatever chanced to them in later years, they
could at least cherish this one memory of a pure, unselfish
affection, young and unstained and almost without thought of sex,
come and gone on the very threshold of their lives. This was the
end, they both understood. They were glad that it was to be so.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: tear of a ministry. Thus it is that their eyes begin to weaken just as
they need to have the clear-sightedness of eagles; their mind is weary
when its youth and fire need to be redoubled. The minister in whom
Rabourdin sought to confide was in the habit of listening to men of
undoubted superiority as they explained ingenious theories of
government, applicable or inapplicable to the affairs of France. Such
men, by whom the difficulties of national policy were never
apprehended, were in the habit of attacking this minister personally
whenever a parliamentary battle or a contest with the secret follies
of the court took place,--on the eve of a struggle with the popular
mind, or on the morrow of a diplomatic discussion which divided the
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