| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: dead, and in what part of France events had thrown you after you had
executed your mission so ably."
That night I was appointed master of petitions to the council of
State, and I also received a private and permanent place in the
employment of Louis XVIII. himself,--a confidential position, not
highly distinguished, but without any risks, a position which put me
at the very heart of the government and has been the source of all my
subsequent prosperity. Madame de Mortsauf had judged rightly. I now
owed everything to her; power and wealth, happiness and knowledge; she
guided and encouraged me, purified my heart, and gave to my will that
unity of purpose without which the powers of youth are wasted. Later I
The Lily of the Valley |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: back by too much rain, as it had been last year.
She gave me a shrewd glance. `He not Jesus,' she blustered;
`he not know about the wet and the dry.
I did not answer her; what was the use? As I sat waiting
for the hour when Ambrosch and Antonia would return
from the fields, I watched Mrs. Shimerda at her work.
She took from the oven a coffee-cake which she wanted to keep warm
for supper, and wrapped it in a quilt stuffed with feathers.
I have seen her put even a roast goose in this quilt to keep it hot.
When the neighbours were there building the new house, they saw
her do this, and the story got abroad that the Shimerdas kept
My Antonia |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Virginian by Owen Wister: decided to break our necks.
We were passing, I have said, through a range of demi-mountains.
It was a little country where trees grew, water ran, and the
plains were shut out for a while. The road had steep places in
it, and places here and there where you could fall off and go
bounding to the bottom among stones. But Buck, for some reason,
did not think these opportunities good enough for him. He
selected a more theatrical moment. We emerged from a narrow
canyon suddenly upon five hundred cattle and some cow-boys
branding calves by a fire in a corral. It was a sight that Buck
knew by heart. He instantly treated it like an appalling
The Virginian |
