| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Flower Fables by Louisa May Alcott: lay around, filled with withered flowers and bare, drooping trees;
while heavy clouds hung low in the dark sky, and a cold wind
murmured sadly through the wintry air.
With a beating heart Violet folded her fading wreath more closely
to her breast, and with weary wings flew onward to the dreary palace.
Here, before the closed doors, stood many forms with dark faces and
harsh, discordant voices, who sternly asked the shivering little Fairy
why she came to them.
Gently she answered, telling them her errand, beseeching them
to let her pass ere the cold wind blighted her frail blossoms.
Then they flung wide the doors, and she passed in.
Flower Fables |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald: the middle of the conversation, and yet not be irritating to
distraction. She did it constantly, with such a serious
enthusiasm that he grew fond of watching her golden hair bent
over a book, brow wrinkled ever so little at hunting her
sentence.
Through early March he took to going to Philadelphia for
week-ends. Almost always there was some one else there and she
seemed not anxious to see him alone, for many occasions presented
themselves when a word from her would have given him another
delicious half-hour of adoration. But he fell gradually in love
and began to speculate wildly on marriage. Though this design
This Side of Paradise |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Fisherman's Luck by Henry van Dyke: Sure enough, about six o'clock we saw him standing on a grassy
point, hurling his line, with a fat worm on the end of it, far
across the stream, and letting it drift down with the current. But
the water was too fine for that style of fishing, and the poor old
fellow had but a half dozen little fish. My creel was already
overflowing, so I emptied out all of the grayling into his bag, and
went on up the river to complete my tale of trout before dark.
And when the fishing is over, there is Graygown with the wagon,
waiting at the appointed place under the trees, beside the road.
The sturdy white pony trots gayly homeward. The pale yellow stars
blossom out above the hills again, as they did on that first night
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