| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Awakening & Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin: She disappeared among the reeds and willows that grew thick
along the banks of the deep, sluggish bayou; and she did not come
back again.
Some weeks later there was a curious scene enacted at L'Abri.
In the centre of the smoothly swept back yard was a great bonfire.
Armand Aubigny sat in the wide hallway that commanded a view of the
spectacle; and it was he who dealt out to a half dozen negroes the
material which kept this fire ablaze.
A graceful cradle of willow, with all its dainty furbishings,
was laid upon the pyre, which had already been fed with the
richness of a priceless layette. Then there were silk gowns,
Awakening & Selected Short Stories |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: even under the shadow of the possibility that it was studied.
For if it occurred to me that I might occasionally excite
suspicion by the little outbreaks of my sharper passion for them,
so too I remember wondering if I mightn't see a queerness
in the traceable increase of their own demonstrations.
They were at this period extravagantly and preternaturally fond
of me; which, after all, I could reflect, was no more than a
graceful response in children perpetually bowed over and hugged.
The homage of which they were so lavish succeeded, in truth,
for my nerves, quite as well as if I never appeared to myself,
as I may say, literally to catch them at a purpose in it.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Complete Poems of Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: And rolled on its harmonious way
Into the boundless realms of space!
So said the guests in speech and song,
As in the chimney, burning bright,
We hung the iron crane to-night,
And merry was the feast and long.
II
And now I sit and muse on what may be,
And in my vision see, or seem to see,
Through floating vapors interfused with light,
Shapes indeterminate, that gleam and fade,
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