| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Ruling Passion by Henry van Dyke: time in its history, as an impromptu target in a shooting-match. A
red woollen scarf twisted about his loins gave a touch of colour and
picturesqueness.
It was not exactly a court dress, but it sat well on the powerful
sinewy figure of the man. He never gave a thought to his looks, but
peeled his potatoes with a dexterity which betrayed a past-master of
the humble art, and threw the skins into the fire.
"Look you, m'sieu'," he said to young Winthrop Alden, who sat on a
fallen tree near him, mending the fly-rod which he had broken in the
morning's fishing, "look you, it is an affair of the most strange,
yet of the most certain. We have known always that ours was a good
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: opinion of people with whom any intercourse a few months ago
would have been a disgrace-- when she saw him thus civil, not
only to herself, but to the very relations whom he had openly
disdained, and recollected their last lively scene in Hunsford
Parsonage-- the difference, the change was so great, and struck
so forcibly on her mind, that she could hardly restrain her
astonishment from being visible. Never, even in the company of
his dear friends at Netherfield, or his dignified relations at
Rosings, had she seen him so desirous to please, so free from
self-consequence or unbending reserve, as now, when no
importance could result from the success of his endeavours, and
Pride and Prejudice |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Somebody's Little Girl by Martha Young: in the world, for this lady knew the things that little girls only
could remember. If she had thought about it she would have told the
lady about the tiny apple-trees with the very, very small apples on
them, and other rows of apple-trees over those, and other rows on
top of those, and on top of all a row of big round red apples.
Then the lady might have said: Yes, there were apple-trees like that
in the world, for all the nursery walls were papered like that, with
a row of big round red apples at the top.
But Bessie Bell did not think of or remember that then; she just
leaned up against the lady and swung one of her little feet up and
down, back and forth, as she sat on the stone bench: she was so
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