| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: the bars through in the course of the day. Fearing a visit from the
Governor, he stopped up the breaches with bread crumb rubbed in rust
to make it look like iron; he hid his rope, and waited for a favorable
night with the intensity of anticipation, the deep anguish of soul
that makes a prisoner's life dramatic.
"At last, one murky night, an autumn night, he finished cutting
through the bars, tied the cord firmly to the stump, and perched
himself on the sill outside, holding on by one hand to the piece of
iron remaining. Then he waited for the darkest hour of the night, when
the sentinels would probably be asleep; this would be not long before
dawn. He knew the hours of their rounds, the length of each watch,
The Muse of the Department |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: looking big and strong in his shooting-boots and his white
blouse, and a sort of sportsman elation and excitement
incomprehensible to her, she forgot her own chagrin for the sake
of his pleasure, and said good-bye to him cheerfully.
"Pardon, gentlemen!" he said, running out onto the steps. "Have
you put the lunch in? Why is the chestnut on the right? Well, it
doesn't matter. Laska, down; go and lie down!"
"Put it with the herd of oxen," he said to the herdsman, who was
waiting for him at the steps with some question. "Excuse me, here
comes another villain."
Levin jumped out of the wagonette, in which he had already taken
Anna Karenina |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: design.
To these things and a congregation of savages entered suddenly a
wonderful man, completely in the confidence of their God, whom he
treated colloquially and exploited very much as a newspaper
reporter would exploit a foreign potentate. But, unlike the
newspaper reporter, he never allowed his listeners to forget that
he, and not He, was the centre of attraction. With a voice of
silver and with imagery borrowed from the auction-room, he built
up for his hearers a heaven on the lines of the Palmer House (but
with all the gilding real gold, and all the plate-glass diamond),
and set in the centre of it a loud-voiced, argumentative, very
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