| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: When braggarts, self-satisfied and in love with themselves, step early
into the fame which belongs rightly to their future achievements, they
are men of genius only in the eyes of fools. If talent is to be
measured by youthful shyness, by that indefinable modesty which men
born to glory lose in the practice of their art, as a pretty woman
loses hers among the artifices of coquetry, then this unknown young
man might claim to be possessed of genuine merit. The habit of success
lessens doubt; and modesty, perhaps, is doubt.
Worn down with poverty and discouragement, and dismayed at this moment
by his own presumption, the young neophyte might not have dared to
enter the presence of the master to whom we owe our admirable portrait
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Son of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: "Let's ride," and he reined his pony into the dark shadows of
the wood. Behind him came Meriem and in front, prowling
ahead waiting a favorable opportunity, skulked Numa, the lion.
Out upon the plain a lone horseman muttered a low curse as
he saw the two disappear from sight. It was Hanson. He had
followed them from the bungalow. Their way led in the direction
of his camp, so he had a ready and plausible excuse should they
discover him; but they had not seen him for they had not turned
their eyes behind.
Now he turned directly toward the spot at which they had
entered the jungle. He no longer cared whether he was observed
The Son of Tarzan |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James: continued, "he can make sacrifices if he likes."
Little Bilham had a pause. "Oh he's not keen for sacrifices; or
thinks, that is, possibly, that he has made enough."
"Well, it IS virtuous," his companion observed with some decision.
"That's exactly," the young man dropped after a moment, "what I mean."
It kept Strether himself silent a little. "I've made it out for
myself," he then went on; "I've really, within the last half-hour,
got hold of it. I understand it in short at last; which at first--
when you originally spoke to me--I didn't. Nor when Chad originally
spoke to me either."
"Oh," said little Bilham, "I don't think that at that time you
|
