| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Ruling Passion by Henry van Dyke: touch. The wedding guests danced as if they were enchanted. The
big bridegroom came up and clapped him on the back, with the nearest
approach to a gesture of affection that backwoods etiquette allows
between men.
"Jack, you're the boss fiddler o' this hull county. Have a drink
now? I guess you 're mighty dry."
"MERCI, NON," said Jacques. "I drink only de museek dis night. Eef
I drink two t'ings, I get dronk."
In between the dances, and while the supper was going on, he played
quieter tunes--ballads and songs that he knew Serena liked. After
supper came the final reel; and when that was wound up, with immense
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton: pleasant contrast to the adjoining dinginess.
The Bunner sisters were proud of the neatness of their shop
and content with its humble prosperity. It was not what they had
once imagined it would be, but though it presented but a shrunken
image of their earlier ambitions it enabled them to pay their rent
and keep themselves alive and out of debt; and it was long
since their hopes had soared higher.
Now and then, however, among their greyer hours there came one
not bright enough to be called sunny, but rather of the silvery
twilight hue which sometimes ends a day of storm. It was such an
hour that Ann Eliza, the elder of the firm, was soberly enjoying as
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne: channel; and I beheld with startled clearness the photographic
presentment of a crowd of strangers. "J. Trent, Master" at the
top of the card directed me to a smallish, weazened man, with
bushy eyebrows and full white beard, dressed in a frock coat
and white trousers; a flower stuck in his button-hole, his
bearded chin set forward, his mouth clenched with habitual
determination. There was not much of the sailor in his looks,
but plenty of the martinet: a dry, precise man, who might pass
for a preacher in some rigid sect; and whatever he was, not the
Captain Trent of San Francisco. The men, too, were all new to
me: the cook, an unmistakable Chinaman, in his characteristic
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