| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: been suggested to her imagination. Madeline's name, which had come
to be for him an epitome of what was finest and most valuable, most
to be lived for, was dropping from men's lips into a kind of an
abyss of dishonourable suggestion. There was no way out of it or
around it. It was a cloud which encompassed them, suddenly
blackening down.
There was nothing that he could do--nothing. Except, yes, of
course--that was obvious, as obvious as any other plain duty.
Through his selfishness it had a beginning; in spite of his
selfishness it should have an end. That went without saying. No
more walks or rides. In a conventional way, perhaps--but nothing
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Lesser Bourgeoisie by Honore de Balzac: "Ah! excuse me! I see monsieur is busy. Could I say a word to monsieur
when he is alone?"
Cerizet, who had an eye as nimble as a hand, instantly noticed a
certain fact. La Peyrade, who was so placed as to be plainly seen by
the new-comer, no sooner heard that drawling, honeyed voice, than he
turned his head in a manner to conceal his features. Instead therefore
of being roughly sent away, as usually happened to petitioners who
addressed the most surly of official clerks, the modest visitor heard
herself greeted in a very surprising manner.
"Come in, come in, Madame Lambert," said Cerizet; "you won't be kept
waiting long; come in."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: heart, when it pleases him with every turn, when he loves to recall
it and dwells upon its recollection with entire delight, fiction is
called romance.
Walter Scott is out and away the king of the romantics. THE LADY
OF THE LAKE has no indisputable claim to be a poem beyond the
inherent fitness and desirability of the tale. It is just such a
story as a man would make up for himself, walking, in the best
health and temper, through just such scenes as it is laid in.
Hence it is that a charm dwells undefinable among these slovenly
verses, as the unseen cuckoo fills the mountains with his note;
hence, even after we have flung the book aside, the scenery and
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