| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Just Folks by Edgar A. Guest: For hearts and minds, of sorrow now, have all that they can hold.
The roses haven't changed a bit, nor have the lilacs stranged a bit,
They bud and bloom the way they did before the war began.
The world is upside down to-day, there's much to make us frown to-day,
And gloom and sadness everywhere beset the path of man.
But now the lilacs bloom again and give us their perfume again,
And now the roses smile at us and nod along the way;
And it is good to see again the blossoms on each tree again,
And feel that nature hasn't changed the way we have to-day.
Oh, we have changed from what we were; we're not the carefree lot we were;
Our hearts are filled with sorrow now and grave concern and pain,
 Just Folks |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy: prosperity which shone over Bombay some few years ago, that he
arrived on the scene. Building and engineering partook of the
general impetus. Speculation moved with an accelerated velocity
every successive day, the only disagreeable contingency connected
with it being the possibility of a collapse.
Elfride had never told her father of the four-and-twenty-hours'
escapade with Stephen, nor had it, to her knowledge, come to his
ears by any other route. It was a secret trouble and grief to the
girl for a short time, and Stephen's departure was another
ingredient in her sorrow. But Elfride possessed special
facilities for getting rid of trouble after a decent interval.
 A Pair of Blue Eyes |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Pupil by Henry James: for granted. Morgan Moreen was somehow sickly without being
"delicate," and that he looked intelligent - it is true Pemberton
wouldn't have enjoyed his being stupid - only added to the
suggestion that, as with his big mouth and big ears he really
couldn't be called pretty, he might too utterly fail to please.
Pemberton was modest, was even timid; and the chance that his small
scholar might prove cleverer than himself had quite figured, to his
anxiety, among the dangers of an untried experiment. He reflected,
however, that these were risks one had to run when one accepted a
position, as it was called, in a private family; when as yet one's
university honours had, pecuniarily speaking, remained barren. At
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