| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Malbone: An Oldport Romance by Thomas Wentworth Higginson: watch the procession of the young and fair,--as I look at
stately houses, from each of which has gone forth almost within
my memory a funeral or a bride,--then every thoroughfare of
human life becomes in fancy but an ocean shore, with its
ripples and its wrecks. One learns, in growing older, that no
fiction can be so strange nor appear so improbable as would the
simple truth; and that doubtless even Shakespeare did but
timidly transcribe a few of the deeds and passions he had
personally known. For no man of middle age can dare trust
himself to portray life in its full intensity, as he has
studied or shared it; he must resolutely set aside as
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from One Basket by Edna Ferber: hallway. She stared at Tessie. Then: "Why, my dear!" she
said. "My dear! Come in here."
Angie Hatton! Tessie began to cry weakly, her face buried in
Angie Hatton's expensive shoulder. Tessie remembered later that
she had felt no surprise at the act.
"There, there!" Angie Hatton was saying. "Just poke up the
fire, Dad. And get something from the dining room. Oh, I don't
know. To drink, you know. Something----"
Then Old Man Hatton stood over her, holding a small glass to her
lips. Tessie drank it obediently, made a wry little face,
coughed, wiped her eyes, and sat up. She looked from one to the
One Basket |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Several Works by Edgar Allan Poe: made bold to seize Fortunato by an arm above the elbow.
"The nitre!" I said; "see, it increases. It hangs like moss
upon the vaults. We are below the river's bed. The drops of
moisture trickle among the bones. Come, we will go back ere it is
too late. Your cough--"
"It is nothing," he said; "let us go on. But first, another
draught of the Medoc."
I broke and reached him a flagon of De Grave. He emptied it
at a breath. His eyes flashed with a fierce light. He laughed and
threw the bottle upwards with a gesticulation I did not understand.
I looked at him in surprise. He repeated the movement--a
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