| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Land that Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: The first thing we did was to taste the water of the little stream--
which, to our delight, we found sweet, pure and cold. This stream
was entirely free from dangerous reptiles, because, as I later
discovered, they became immediately dormant when subjected to a much
lower temperature than 70 degrees Fahrenheit. They dislike cold water
and keep as far away from it as possible. There were countless
brook-trout here, and deep holes that invited us to bathe, and along
the bank of the stream were trees bearing a close resemblance to
ash and beech and oak, their characteristics evidently induced by
the lower temperature of the air above the cold water and by the
fact that their roots were watered by the water from the stream
The Land that Time Forgot |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Juana by Honore de Balzac: "What has happened?" she asked, instantly perceiving from the livid
paleness of her husband that the misfortune she had daily expected was
upon them.
"Oh, nothing; but I want to speak to you--to you, alone."
And he glanced at his sons.
"My dears, go to your room, and go to bed," said Juana; "say your
prayers without me."
The boys left the room in silence, with the incurious obedience of
well-trained children.
"My dear Juana," said Diard, in a coaxing voice, "I left you with very
little money, and I regret it now. Listen to me; since I relieved you
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: high above it though he was still perched; he watched as for some
comforting common fact, some vulgar human note, the passage of a
scavenger or a thief, some night-bird however base. He would have
blessed that sign of life; he would have welcomed positively the
slow approach of his friend the policeman, whom he had hitherto
only sought to avoid, and was not sure that if the patrol had come
into sight he mightn't have felt the impulse to get into relation
with it, to hail it, on some pretext, from his fourth floor.
The pretext that wouldn't have been too silly or too compromising,
the explanation that would have saved his dignity and kept his
name, in such a case, out of the papers, was not definite to him:
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