| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Last War: A World Set Free by H. G. Wells: no calling by which he could earn a living. He tried teaching
and some journalism, but in a little while he found himself on
the underside of a world in which he had always reckoned to live
in the sunshine. For innumerable men such an experience has
meant mental and spiritual destruction, but Barnet, in spite of
his bodily gravitation towards comfort, showed himself when put
to the test, of the more valiant modern quality. He was saturated
with the creative stoicism of the heroic times that were already
dawning, and he took his difficulties and discomforts stoutly as
his appointed material, and turned them to expression.
Indeed, in his book, he thanks fortune for them. 'I might have
The Last War: A World Set Free |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: agreement between the contracting parties to keep faith with
themselves, and not to live together for a moment after complete
accord had ceased to exist between them. The new adultery was
unfaithfulness to self.
It was, as Westall had just reminded her, on this understanding
that they had married. The ceremony was an unimportant
concession to social prejudice: now that the door of divorce
stood open, no marriage need be an imprisonment, and the contract
therefore no longer involved any diminution of self-respect. The
nature of their attachment placed them so far beyond the reach of
such contingencies that it was easy to discuss them with an open
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: she's a little shy now,--making a woman of her, the kind of woman
her mother would have liked her to be," he ended, jerking his head at
the photograph.
Willoughby's selfishness, though consistent as Helen saw with real
affection for his daughter, made her determined to have the girl
to stay with her, even if she had to promise a complete course
of instruction in the feminine graces. She could not help laughing
at the notion of it--Rachel a Tory hostess!--and marvelling as she
left him at the astonishing ignorance of a father.
Rachel, when consulted, showed less enthusiasm than Helen could
have wished. One moment she was eager, the next doubtful. Visions of
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