| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad: perfectly intolerable. He picked up the paper at his feet, and sat
down with the wish to think it out, to understand why his wife--his
wife!--should leave him, should throw away respect, comfort, peace,
decency, position throw away everything for nothing! He set himself to
think out the hidden logic of her action--a mental undertaking fit for
the leisure hours of a madhouse, though he couldn't see it. And he
thought of his wife in every relation except the only fundamental one.
He thought of her as a well-bred girl, as a wife, as a cultured
person, as the mistress of a house, as a lady; but he never for a
moment thought of her simply as a woman.
Then a fresh wave, a raging wave of humiliation, swept through his
Tales of Unrest |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Desert Gold by Zane Grey: got him I don't know. I'd have gambled it'd take all of eight
men to steal him. But Greasers have got us skinned on handlin'
hosses."
Belding was unconsolable. He cursed and railed, and finally
declared he was going to trail the raiders.
"Tom, you just ain't agoin' to do nothin' of the kind," said Ladd
coolly.
Belding groaned and bowed his head.
"Laddy, you're right," he replied, presently. "I've got to stand
it. I can't leave the women and my property. But it's sure tough.
I'm sore way down deep, and nothin' but blood would ever satisfy
Desert Gold |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: vacant ground a palace or a fort.
The sea was beautiful; I had just dressed after bathing; and I awaited
Pauline, who was also bathing, in a granite cove floored with fine
sand, the most coquettish bath-room that Nature ever devised for her
water-fairies. The spot was at the farther end of Croisic, a dainty
little peninsula in Brittany; it was far from the port, and so
inaccessible that the coast-guard seldom thought it necessary to pass
that way. To float in ether after floating on the wave!--ah! who would
not have floated on the future as I did! Why was I thinking? Whence
comes evil?--who knows! Ideas drop into our hearts or into our heads
without consulting us. No courtesan was ever more capricious nor more
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