| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane: and tumble of the down-town streets and learned to breathe maledictory
defiance at the police who occasionally used to climb up, drag him
from his perch and beat him.
In the lower part of the city he daily involved himself in
hideous tangles. If he and his team chanced to be in the rear he
preserved a demeanor of serenity, crossing his legs and bursting
forth into yells when foot passengers took dangerous dives beneath
the noses of his champing horses. He smoked his pipe calmly for he
knew that his pay was marching on.
If in the front and the key-truck of chaos, he entered
terrifically into the quarrel that was raging to and fro among the
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: "If you have the support of Monsieur de Watteville and his party, you
will get a hundred votes in a mass, and far more to be trusted than
those on which you rely. It is always possible to produce division of
interests; convictions are inseparable."
"The deuce is in it!" said Savarus. "I am attached to you, and I could
do a great deal for you, Father! Perhaps we may compound with the
Devil. Whatever Monsieur de Watteville's business may be, by engaging
Girardet, and prompting him, it will be possible to drag the
proceedings out till the elections are over. I will not undertake to
plead till the day after I am returned."
"Do this one thing," said the Abbe. "Come to the Hotel de Rupt: there
Albert Savarus |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: really become to the London of his own day what to imperial
Neronian Rome the author of the Satyricon once had been,
yet in his inmost heart he desired to be something more than a mere
arbiter elegantiarum, to be consulted on the wearing of a jewel,
or the knotting of a necktie, or the conduct of a cane.
He sought to elaborate some new scheme of life that would have
its reasoned philosophy and its ordered principles, and find
in the spiritualizing of the senses its highest realization.
The worship of the senses has often, and with much justice,
been decried, men feeling a natural instinct of terror about
passions and sensations that seem stronger than themselves,
The Picture of Dorian Gray |
