| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Adam Bede by George Eliot: what she was assenting to. Dinah saw she was not inclined to
talk, but there would not have been time to say much more, for
they were now at the yard-gate.
The still twilight, with its dying western red and its few faint
struggling stars, rested on the farm-yard, where there was not a
sound to be heard but the stamping of the cart-horses in the
stable. It was about twenty minutes after sunset. The fowls were
all gone to roost, and the bull-dog lay stretched on the straw
outside his kennel, with the black-and-tan terrier by his side,
when the falling-to of the gate disturbed them and set them
barking, like good officials, before they had any distinct
Adam Bede |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: appetites tell you it is dinner time, then come with me to the
festal saloon."
At this kind invitation, the hungry mariners were quite
overjoyed; and one of them, taking upon himself to be
spokesman, assured their hospitable hostess that any hour of
the day was dinner time with them, whenever they could get
flesh to put in the pot, and fire to boil it with. So the
beautiful woman led the way; and the four maidens (one of them
had sea-green hair, another a bodice of oak bark, a third
sprinkled a shower of water drops from her fingers' ends, and
the fourth had some other oddity, which I have forgotten), all
Tanglewood Tales |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Coxon Fund by Henry James: charming an instinct as that which permitted her to laugh out, as
for the joy of her difficulty, into the priggish old room. This
remarkable young woman could be earnest without being solemn, and
at moments when I ought doubtless to have cursed her obstinacy I
found myself watching the unstudied play of her eyebrows or the
recurrence of a singularly intense whiteness produced by the
parting of her lips. These aberrations, I hasten to add, didn't
prevent my learning soon enough why she had wished to see me. Her
reason for this was as distinct as her beauty: it was to make me
explain what I had meant, on the occasion of our first meeting, by
Mr. Saltram's want of dignity. It wasn't that she couldn't
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