| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: ill!'--Not a sound; no one comes! Then am I do die like a dog?
This is to be my reward--I am forsaken at the last. They are
wicked, heartless women; curses on them, I loathe them. I shall
rise at night from my grave to curse them again; for, after all,
my friends, have I done wrong? They are behaving very badly to
me, eh? . . . What am I saying? Did you not tell me just now that
Delphine is in the room? She is more tender-hearted than her
sister. . . . Eugene, you are my son, you know. You will love
her; be a father to her! Her sister is very unhappy. And there
are their fortunes! Ah, God! I am dying, this anguish is almost
more than I can bear! Cut off my head; leave me nothing but my
Father Goriot |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Moran of the Lady Letty by Frank Norris: already burning joss-sticks on the fo'castle head, kowtowing their
foreheads to the deck.
Moran went forward and kicked them to their feet and hurled their
joss-sticks into the sea.
"Feng shui! Feng shui!" they exclaimed with bated breaths. "The
Feng shui no likee we."
Low in the east the horizon began to blacken against the sky. It
was early morning. A watch was set, the Chinamen sent below, and
until daybreak, when Charlie began to make a clattering of tins in
the galley as he set about preparing breakfast, Wilbur paced the
rounds of the schooner, looking, listening, and waiting again for
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: that sentiment; nor can any picture of the man be drawn that does
not in proportion dwell upon it. This is a delicate task; but if
we are to leave behind us (as we wish) some presentment of the
friend we have lost, it is a task that must be undertaken.
For all his play of mind and fancy, for all his indulgence - and,
as time went on, he grew indulgent - Fleeming had views of duty
that were even stern. He was too shrewd a student of his fellow-
men to remain long content with rigid formulae of conduct. Iron-
bound, impersonal ethics, the procrustean bed of rules, he soon saw
at their true value as the deification of averages. 'As to Miss (I
declare I forget her name) being bad,' I find him writing, 'people
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