| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: she sprang up and came to meet me, then she sat down and pointed
without a word to a chair by the fire. Her face wore the inscrutable
mask beneath which women of the world conceal their most vehement
emotions. Trouble had withered that face already. Nothing of its
beauty now remained, save the marvelous outlines in which its
principal charm had lain.
" 'It is essential, madame, that I should speak to M. le Comte----"
" 'If so, you would be more favored than I am,' she said, interrupting
me. 'M. de Restaud will see no one. He will hardly allow his doctor to
come, and will not be nursed even by me. When people are ill, they
have such strange fancies! They are like children, they do not know
Gobseck |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie: "At the present rate of exchange it amounts to considerably over
two hundred and fifty thousand pounds."
"That's so. Maybe you think I'm talking through my hat, but I
can deliver the goods all right, with enough over to spare for
your fee."
Sir James flushed slightly.
"There is no question of a fee, Mr. Hersheimmer. I am not a
private detective."
"Sorry. I guess I was just a mite hasty, but I've been feeling
bad about this money question. I wanted to offer a big reward
for news of Jane some days ago, but your crusted institution of
Secret Adversary |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from End of the Tether by Joseph Conrad: of rheumatism, he supposed. Otherwise he knew nothing
of the ills of the flesh. At the ringing of the breakfast
bell he went below to feed his canaries, wind up the
chronometers, and take the head of the table. From
there he had before his eyes the big carbon photographs
of his daughter, her husband, and two fat-legged babies
--his grandchildren--set in black frames into the maple-
wood bulkheads of the cuddy. After breakfast he dusted
the glass over these portraits himself with a cloth, and
brushed the oil painting of his wife with a plumate kept
suspended from a small brass hook by the side of the
End of the Tether |
