| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: lavished on him the most affectionate attentions; she brought him his
stick with a persevering devotion that made the cynical smile, she
gave him her arm, rode in his carriage, and accompanied him in all his
drives; she even persuaded him that she liked the smell of tobacco,
and read him his favorite paper La Quotidienne in the midst of clouds
of smoke, which the malicious old sailor intentionally blew over her;
she learned piquet to be a match for the old count; and this fantastic
damsel even listened without impatience to his periodical narratives
of the battles of the Belle-Poule, the manoeuvres of the Ville de
Paris, M. de Suffren's first expedition, or the battle of Aboukir.
Though the old sailor had often said that he knew his longitude and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle: fond) along with him, our pirate went, without any loss of time,
to visit Sir Thomas Modiford, who was then the royal governor of
all this devil's brew of wickedness.
They found His Excellency seated in a great easy-chair, under the
shadow of a slatted veranda, the floor whereof was paved with
brick. He was clad, for the sake of coolness, only in his shirt,
breeches, and stockings, and he wore slippers on his feet. He
was smoking a great cigarro of tobacco, and a goblet of lime
juice and water and rum stood at his elbow on a table. Here, out
of the glare of the heat, it was all very cool and pleasant, with
a sea breeze blowing violently in through the slats, setting them
Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: This was why I had now given to Mrs. Grose's steps so marked
a direction--a direction that made her, when she perceived it,
oppose a resistance that showed me she was freshly mystified.
"You're going to the water, Miss?--you think she's IN--?"
"She may be, though the depth is, I believe, nowhere very great.
But what I judge most likely is that she's on the spot from which,
the other day, we saw together what I told you."
"When she pretended not to see--?"
"With that astounding self-possession? I've always been sure she wanted
to go back alone. And now her brother has managed it for her."
Mrs. Grose still stood where she had stopped. "You suppose they
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