| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain: found herself alone, and the next instant she had the
book in her hands. The title-page -- Professor Some-
body's ANATOMY -- carried no information to her mind;
so she began to turn the leaves. She came at once upon
a handsomely engraved and colored frontispiece -- a hu-
man figure, stark naked. At that moment a shadow
fell on the page and Tom Sawyer stepped in at the
door and caught a glimpse of the picture. Becky
snatched at the book to close it, and had the hard luck
to tear the pictured page half down the middle. She
thrust the volume into the desk, turned the key, and
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart: twofold. Coffee is only the first half. The second half is
conversation."
"I converse very badly."
"So do I. Suppose we talk about ourselves. We are sure to do that
well. Shall I commence?"
Harmony was in no mood to protest. Having swallowed coffee, why
choke over conversation? Besides, she was very comfortable. It
was warm there, with the heater at her back; better than the
little room with the sagging bed and the doors covered with wall
paper. Her feet had stopped aching, too, She could have sat there
for hours. And--why evade it?--she was interested. This whimsical
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: grotesquely pathetic in their look of agonized terror. A group
of oaks at Grande Isle I remember as especially suggestive: five
stooping silhouettes in line against the horizon, like fleeing
women with streaming garments and wind-blown hair,--bowing
grievously and thrusting out arms desperately northward as to
save themselves from falling. And they are being pursued
indeed;--for the sea is devouring the land. Many and many a mile
of ground has yielded to the tireless charging of Ocean's
cavalry: far out you can see, through a good glass, the
porpoises at play where of old the sugar-cane shook out its
million bannerets; and shark-fins now seam deep water above a
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