| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: up in his granite grotto, the entrance to which was as narrow as that
of a charcoal kiln, he would sink into involuntary sleep, his figure
softly lighted by the warm rays of the sun which crept through the
fissures and fell upon the dainty seaweeds that adorned his retreat,
the veritable nest of a sea-bird. The sun, his sovereign lord, alone
told him that he had slept, by measuring the time he had been absent
from his watery landscapes, his golden sands, his shells and pebbles.
Across a light as brilliant as that from heaven he saw the cities of
which he read; he looked with amazement, but without envy, at courts
and kings, battles, men, and buildings. These daylight dreams made
dearer to him his precious flowers, his clouds, his sun, his granite
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tono Bungay by H. G. Wells: Tory in spirit, and what one may call an adapted Tory by stress
of circumstances; that is to say, he was no longer a legitimist;
he was prepared for the substitution of new lords for old. We
were pill vendors he knew, and no doubt horribly vulgar in soul;
but then it might have been some polygamous Indian rajah, a
great strain on a good man's tact, or some Jew with an inherited
expression of contempt. Anyhow, we were English, and neither
Dissenters nor Socialists, and he was cheerfully prepared to do
what he could to make gentlemen of both of us. He might have
preferred Americans for some reasons; they are not so obviously
taken from one part of the social system and dumped down in
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Young Forester by Zane Grey: A lot you care about my sore wrists. You're weakening, Buell, and you know
it. You've got a yellow streak."
"Shet up!" said Herky, in a low, sharp tone. A silence followed. "Buell,
look hyar in the trail. Tracks! Goin' in an' comin' out."
"How old are they?"
"I'll bet a hoss they ain't an hour old."
"Somebody's usin' the cabin, eh?"
The men then fell to whispering, and I could not understand what was said,
but I fancied they were thinking only of me. My mind worked fast. Buell and
his fellows had surely not run across Hiram Bent. Had the old hunter
deserted me? I flouted such a thought. It was next to a certainty that he
The Young Forester |
