| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: roof, presented to the eye those vast proportions which surprise
inquirers when, after attaining sixty feet above the ground-floor,
they expect to find an artist squeezed into a gutter.
This gallery, so to speak, was profusely lighted from above, through
enormous panes of glass furnished with those green linen shades by
means of which all artists arrange the light. A quantity of
caricatures, heads drawn at a stroke, either in color or with the
point of a knife, on walls painted in a dark gray, proved that,
barring a difference in expression, the most distinguished young girls
have as much fun and folly in their minds as men. A small stove with a
large pipe, which described a fearful zigzag before it reached the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Alexander's Bridge by Willa Cather: "No, I think not, though I am glad you ask me.
You see, one can't be jealous about things
in general; but about particular, definite,
personal things,"--here she had thrown her
hands up to his shoulders with a quick,
impulsive gesture--"oh, about those I should be
very jealous. I should torture myself--I couldn't
help it." After that it was easy to forget,
actually to forget. He wondered to-night,
as he poured his wine, how many times he had
thought of Hilda in the last ten years.
 Alexander's Bridge |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: John Gorham
"Tell me what you're doing over here, John Gorham,
Sighing hard and seeming to be sorry when you're not;
Make me laugh or let me go now, for long faces in the moonlight
Are a sign for me to say again a word that you forgot." --
"I'm over here to tell you what the moon already
May have said or maybe shouted ever since a year ago;
I'm over here to tell you what you are, Jane Wayland,
And to make you rather sorry, I should say, for being so." --
"Tell me what you're saying to me now, John Gorham,
Or you'll never see as much of me as ribbons any more;
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