| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from To-morrow by Joseph Conrad: sense, and he was soothed by the part she took in
his hope, which had become his delusion; in that
idea which blinded his mind to truth and probabil-
ity, just as the other old man in the other cottage
had been made blind, by another disease, to the
light and beauty of the world.
But anything he could interpret as a doubt--
any coldness of assent, or even a simple inattention
to the development of his projects of a home with
his returned son and his son's wife--would irritate
him into flings and jerks and wicked side glances.
To-morrow |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen: but her time was so much occupied in lying-in and teaching
the little ones, that her elder daughters were inevitably
left to shift for themselves; and it was not very wonderful
that Catherine, who had by nature nothing heroic about her,
should prefer cricket, baseball, riding on horseback,
and running about the country at the age of fourteen,
to books--or at least books of information--for, provided
that nothing like useful knowledge could be gained
from them, provided they were all story and no reflection,
she had never any objection to books at all. But from
fifteen to seventeen she was in training for a heroine;
Northanger Abbey |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Man in Lower Ten by Mary Roberts Rinehart: The young woman bent across the table and spoke again quickly. She
had unconsciously raised her voice. Not beautiful, in her
earnestness and stress she rather interested me. I had an idle
inclination to advise the waiter to remove the bottled temptation
from the table. I wonder what would have happened if I had? Suppose
Harrington had not been intoxicated when he entered the Pullman car
Ontario that night!
For they were about to make a journey, I gathered, and the young
woman wished to go alone. I drank three cups of coffee, which
accounted for my wakefulness later, and shamelessly watched the
tableau before me. The woman's protest evidently went for nothing:
The Man in Lower Ten |
