| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: It was a remarkable point in the accoutrement of this brilliant
personage that he held in his left hand a fantastic kind of a
pipe, with an exquisitely painted bowl and an amber mouthpiece.
This he applied to his lips as often as every five or six paces,
and inhaled a deep whiff of smoke, which, after being retained a
moment in his lungs, might be seen to eddy gracefully from his
mouth and nostrils.
As may well be supposed, the street was all astir to find out the
stranger's name.
"It is some great nobleman, beyond question," said one of the
townspeople. "Do you see the star at his breast?"
Mosses From An Old Manse |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: pause that followed Reginald saw the garden open to the light, the blue
quivering sky, the flutter of leaves on the veranda poles, and Anne turning
over the grains of maize on her palm with one finger. Then slowly she shut
her hand, and the new world faded as she murmured slowly, "No, never in
that way." But he had scarcely time to feel anything before she walked
quickly away, and he followed her down the steps, along the garden path,
under the pink rose arches, across the lawn. There, with the gay
herbaceous border behind her, Anne faced Reginald. "It isn't that I'm not
awfully fond of you," she said. "I am. But"--her eyes widened--"not in
the way"--a quiver passed over her face--"one ought to be fond of--" Her
lips parted, and she couldn't stop herself. She began laughing. "There,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: minutes only, they were friends of twenty years.
"Dear friend," said Servin, "can you save him?"
"I can avenge him."
Ginevra quivered. Though the stranger was handsome, his appearance had
not influenced her; the soft pity in a woman's heart for miseries that
are not ignoble had stifled in Ginevra all other emotions; but to hear
a cry of vengeance, to find in that proscribed being an Italian soul,
devotion to Napoleon, Corsican generosity!--ah! that was, indeed, too
much for her. She looked at the officer with a respectful emotion
which shook his heart. For the first time in her life a man had caused
her a keen emotion. She now, like other women, put the soul of the
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