| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: feel he knew less than before, so difficult was it for him to
reconstitute a life in which a single experience had so belittled
all others. His own life, round its central hollow, had been
packed close enough. After this she appeared to have regretted her
confession, though at the moment she spoke there had been pride in
her very embarrassment. She declared to him that his own was the
larger, the dearer possession - the portion one would have chosen
if one had been able to choose; she assured him she could perfectly
imagine some of the echoes with which his silences were peopled.
He knew she couldn't: one's relation to what one had loved and
hated had been a relation too distinct from the relations of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: subject, my 'thoughts' would still be almost altogether about
something that concerns only myself." He was talking to Miss
Staverton, with whom for a couple of months now he had availed
himself of every possible occasion to talk; this disposition and
this resource, this comfort and support, as the situation in fact
presented itself, having promptly enough taken the first place in
the considerable array of rather unattenuated surprises attending
his so strangely belated return to America. Everything was somehow
a surprise; and that might be natural when one had so long and so
consistently neglected everything, taken pains to give surprises so
much margin for play. He had given them more than thirty years -
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Distinguished Provincial at Paris by Honore de Balzac: at the Marquise's forethought in having an apothecary at hand to
sustain an artificial life with drugs. In short, de Marsay brought a
selection from the thousand-and-one jokes made by Parisians on the
spur of the moment, and no sooner uttered than forgotten. Chatelet was
at the back of it all, and the real author of this Punic faith.
Mme. d'Espard turned to Mme. de Bargeton, put up her fan, and said,
"My dear, tell me if your protege's name is really M. de Rubempre?"
"He has assumed his mother's name," said Anais, uneasily.
"But who was his father?"
"His father's name was Chardon."
"And what was this Chardon?"
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