| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Virginian by Owen Wister: "Let's pack and quit here," he said.
Our horses were in the corral and our belongings in the shelter
of what had been once the cabin at this forlorn place. He
collected them in silence while I saddled my own animal, and in
silence we packed the two packhorses, and threw the diamond
hitch, and hauled tight the slack, damp ropes. Soon we had
mounted, and as we turned into the trail I gave a look back at my
last night's lodging.
The Virginian noticed me. "Good-by forever!" he interpreted.
"By God, I hope so!"
"Same here," he confessed. And these were our first natural words
The Virginian |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: said, laughing. "Don't be so prudish! Come, I know how it was; you
complimented Madame de Vandenesse at the ball on her marabouts and she
has put them on again for your sake. She likes you, and you adore her;
it may be a little rapid, but it is all very natural. If I were
mistaken you wouldn't be twisting your gloves like a man who is
furious at having to sit here with me instead of flying to the box of
his idol. She has obtained," continued Madame d'Espard, glancing at
his person impertinently, "certain sacrifices which you refused to
make to society. She ought to be delighted with her success,--in fact,
I have no doubt she is vain of it; I should be so in her place--
immensely. She was never a woman of any mind, but she may now pass for
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Ebb-Tide by Stevenson & Osbourne: he? And he could not. He knew it instantly. He was aware
instantly of an opposition in his members, unanimous and
invincible, clinging to life with a single and fixed resolve,
finger by finger, sinew by sinew; something that was at once he
and not he--at once within and without him;--the shutting of some
miniature valve in his brain, which a single manly thought
should suffice to open--and the grasp of an external fate
ineluctable as gravity. To any man there may come at times a
consciousness that there blows, through all the articulations of
his body, the wind of a spirit not wholly his; that his mind
rebels; that another girds him and carries him whither he would
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