| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: could hear their hooves thundering abroad over the meadows. It had
a martial sound, like cavalry charges. And altogether, as far as
the ears are concerned, we had a very rousing battle-piece
performed for our amusement.
At last the guns and the thunder dropped off; the sun shone on the
wet meadows; the air was scented with the breath of rejoicing trees
and grass; and the river kept unweariedly carrying us on at its
best pace. There was a manufacturing district about Chauny; and
after that the banks grew so high that they hid the adjacent
country, and we could see nothing but clay sides, and one willow
after another. Only, here and there, we passed by a village or a
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: hundred years old and twenty-two; it was alive and dead. Escaped from
his chamber, like a madman from his cell, the little old man had
evidently crept behind a long line of people who were listening
attentively to Marianina's voice as she finished the cavatina from
/Tancred/. He seemed to have come up through the floor, impelled by
some stage mechanism. He stood for a moment motionless and sombre,
watching the festivities, a murmur of which had perhaps reached his
ears. His almost somnambulistic preoccupation was so concentrated upon
things that, although he was in the midst of many people, he saw
nobody. He had taken his place unceremoniously beside one of the most
fascinating women in Paris, a young and graceful dancer, with slender
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Poor and Proud by Oliver Optic: "I shall never do anything in this way. There comes another
gentleman who looks as though he had a sweet tooth; at any rate,
he seems as good-natured as a pound of sugar. I will certainly
try him."
Her heart pounded against her ribs as though it had been worked
by a forty-horse engine--poor girl. It was a great undertaking to
her; quite as great as taking a six-story granite warehouse,
piling it full of merchandise from cellar to attic, and
announcing himself as ready for business, to a child of a larger
growth. Everything seemed to hang on the issues of that
tremendous moment.
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