| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Heart of the West by O. Henry: The saloon was small, and in its atmosphere the odours of meat and
drink struggled for the ascendancy. The pig and the cabbage wrestled
with hydrogen and oxygen. Behind the bar Schwegel laboured with an
assistant whose epidermal pores showed no signs of being obstructed.
Hot weinerwurst and sauerkraut were being served to purchasers of
beer. Curly shuffled to the end of the bar, coughed hollowly, and told
Schwegel that he was a Detroit cabinet-maker out of a job.
It followed as the night the day that he got his schooner and lunch.
"Was you acquainted maybe with Heinrich Strauss in Detroit?" asked
Schwegel.
"Did I know Heinrich Strauss?" repeated Curly, affectionately. "Why,
Heart of the West |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ursula by Honore de Balzac: and moved the retail shopkeepers, the proletaries and the peasantry.
The bourgeoisie presented (like that of the Swiss cantons and of other
small countries) the curious spectacle of the ramifications of certain
autochthonous families, old-fashioned and unpolished perhaps, but who
rule a whole region and pervade it, until nearly all its inhabitants
are cousins. Under Louis XI., an epoch at which the commons first made
real names of their surnames (some of which are united with those of
feudalism) the bourgeoisie of Nemours was made up of Minorets,
Massins, Levraults and Cremieres. Under Louis XIII. these four
families had already produced the Massin-Cremieres, the Levrault-
Massins, the Massin-Minorets, the Minoret-Minorets, the Cremiere-
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An Historical Mystery by Honore de Balzac: longer present; he and Corentin were alone with the family. The
younger man drew a small dagger from his pocket, and began to force
the lock of the box. Just then the desperate galloping of a horse was
heard upon the road and then upon the pavement by the lawn; but most
horrible of all was the fall and sighing of the animal, which seemed
to drop all at once at the door of the middle tower. A convulsion like
that which a thunderbolt might produce shook the spectators when
Laurence, the trailing of whose riding-habit announced her coming,
entered the room. The servants hastily formed into two lines to let
her pass.
In spite of her rapid ride, the girl had felt the full anguish the
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