| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Complete Poems of Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Still at the face of the speaker, her arms uplifted in horror;
But John Alden, upstarting, as if the barb of the arrow
Piercing the heart of his friend had struck his own, and had
sundered
Once and for ever the bonds that held him bound as a captive,
Wild with excess of sensation, the awful delight of his freedom,
Mingled with pain and regret, unconscious of what he was doing,
Clasped, almost with a groan, the motionless form of Priscilla,
Pressing her close to his heart, as for ever his own, and
exclaiming:
"Those whom the Lord hath united, let no man put them asunder!"
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Death of the Lion by Henry James: coat, projecting hungrily all over the place the big transparency
of his mask. It seemed to flare over Fleet Street and somehow made
the actual spot distressingly humble: there was so little for it
to feed on unless he counted the blisters of our stucco or saw his
way to do something with the roses. Even the poor roses were
common kinds. Presently his eyes fell on the manuscript from which
Paraday had been reading to me and which still lay on the bench.
As my own followed them I saw it looked promising, looked pregnant,
as if it gently throbbed with the life the reader had given it.
Mr. Morrow indulged in a nod at it and a vague thrust of his
umbrella. "What's that?"
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Man of Business by Honore de Balzac: "Pooh!" cried Malaga. "I will wager my cabinet-maker's invoice (the
fellow is dunning me) that the little toad was too many for Maxime."
"I bet on Maxime," said Cardot. "Nobody ever caught him napping."
Desroches drank off a glass that Malaga handed to him.
"Mlle. Chocardelle's reading-room," he continued, after a pause, "was
in the Rue Coquenard, just a step or two from the Rue Pigalle where
Maxime was living. The said Mlle. Chocardelle lived at the back on the
garden side of the house, beyond a big dark place where the books were
kept. Antonia left her aunt to look after the business--"
"Had she an aunt even then?" exclaimed Malaga. "Hang it all, Maxime
did things handsomely."
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