| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett: presently I heard her go out of the kitchen door and walk down the
path toward the gate. I could not part so; I ran after her to say
good-by, but she shook her head and waved her hand without looking
back when she heard my hurrying steps, and so went away down the
street.
When I went in again the little house had suddenly grown
lonely, and my room looked empty as it had the day I came. I and
all my belongings had died out of it, and I knew how it would seem
when Mrs. Todd came back and found her lodger gone. So we die
before our own eyes; so we see some chapters of our lives come to
their natural end.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Chouans by Honore de Balzac: her an omen; doubt hooks its claws once more into her heart; she
burns, she trembles, she is grasped by a thought which holds her like
a physical force; she alternates from triumph to agony, and without
the hope of coming happiness she could not endure the torture. A score
of times did Mademoiselle de Verneuil raise the window-curtain, hoping
to see the smoke rising above the rocks; but the fog only took a
grayer tone, which her excited imagination turned into a warning. At
last she let fall the curtain, impatiently resolving not to raise it
again. She looked gloomily around the charming room to which she had
given a soul and a voice, asking herself if it were done in vain, and
this thought brought her back to her preparations.
The Chouans |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost: night; and Manon, instead of following him, promised to come out,
and join us. Lescaut undertook to have a coach waiting at the
door.
"The supper hour having arrived, M. G---- M---- made his
appearance. Already Lescaut was with his sister in the supper
room. The moment the lover entered, he presented his fair one
with a complete set of pearls, necklaces, ear-rings, and
bracelets, which must have cost at least a thousand crowns. He
then placed on the table before her, in louis d'or, two thousand
four hundred francs, the half of her year's allowance. He
seasoned his present with many pretty speeches in the true style
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