| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: year, and taught Modeste the sense of satiety through thought. She
held her life too often in her hand, she said to herself
philosophically and with too real a bitterness, too seriously, and too
often, "Well, what is it, after all?" not to have plunged to her waist
in the deep disgust which all men of genius feel when they try to
complete by intense toil the work to which they have devoted
themselves. Her youth and her rich nature alone kept Modeste at this
period of her life from seeking to enter a cloister. But this sense of
satiety cast her, saturated as she still was with Catholic
spirituality, into the love of Good, the infinite of heaven. She
conceived of charity, service to others, as the true occupation of
Modeste Mignon |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Rezanov by Gertrude Atherton: realm beyond sea, a burgeoning bud of womanhood,
daughter of the commandante. The doom of both
is upon them at once. They have drunk the pois-
oned cup. Rezanov resists the first approaches of
the delightful delirium, remembering Russia, his
duty, his ambition, the poor starving men of the
Sitka factory. At a party he dances with Concha
and they both know that for each there is none
other. So in that setting so wild, so strange, so
remote, so lovely for the old world grace that is
made native there by this bright, deep, fond girl,
Rezanov |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Riverman by Stewart Edward White: pounding of surf warned him he had drifted almost to the open lake.
After all, there was no essential difference between owing money to
a man in Michigan and to a man in California. That was the net
result of his struggle.
"When the time comes, we'll just borrow that money on a long-time
mortgage, like sensible people," he said aloud, "and quit this
everlasting scrabbling."
Back to town he pulled with long vigorous strokes, skittering his
feathered spoon-oars lightly over the tops of the wavelets. At the
slip he made fast the boat, and a few minutes later re-entered the
office, his step springy, his face glowing. Newmark glanced up.
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