| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: cushions of the couch, staring down at her bare, cold feet, at
her laboring breast, rising and falling under her open nightdress.
The dream was gone, but the feverish reality of it still
pervaded her and she held it as the vibrating string holds a
tone. In the last hour the shadows had had their way with
Caroline. They had shown her the nothingness of time and space,
of system and discipline, of closed doors and broad waters.
Shuddering, she thought of the Arabian fairy tale in which the
genie brought the princess of China to the sleeping prince of
Damascus and carried her through the air back to her palace at
dawn. Caroline closed her eyes and dropped her elbows weakly
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Blue Flower by Henry van Dyke: life's joys, the greatest of life's achievements. The
practical life was a blind, dull routine. Most men were
toiling at tasks which they did not like, by rules which they
did not understand. They never looked beyond the edge of
their work. The philosophical life was a spider's web--filmy
threads of theory spun out of the inner consciousness--it touched
the world only at certain chosen points of attachment. There was
nothing firm, nothing substantial in it. You could look through
it like a veil and see the real world lying beyond. But the
theorist could see only the web which he had spun. Knowing did
not come by speculating, theorising. Knowing came by seeing.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Two Poets by Honore de Balzac: connections of ours; they are the older branch of the Negrepelisses;
and if she vouchsafes to acknowledge the relationship, I intend to
cultivate her a good deal; she may perhaps procure a place for
Bargeton. At my solicitation, it might be desired at Court that he
should represent the Charente, and that would be a step towards his
election here. If he were a deputy, it would further other steps that
I wish to take in Paris. You, my darling, have brought about this
change in my life. After this morning's duel, I am obliged to shut up
my house for some time; for there will be people who will side with
the Chandours against us. In our position, and in a small town,
absence is the only way of softening down bad feeling. But I shall
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