| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Poems by Bronte Sisters: STANZAS.
Often rebuked, yet always back returning
To those first feelings that were born with me,
And leaving busy chase of wealth and learning
For idle dreams of things which cannot be:
To-day, I will seek not the shadowy region;
Its unsustaining vastness waxes drear;
And visions rising, legion after legion,
Bring the unreal world too strangely near.
I'll walk, but not in old heroic traces,
And not in paths of high morality,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from McTeague by Frank Norris: connected with the city pound. When the great railroad
strike occurred, he promptly got himself engaged as deputy-
sheriff, and spent a memorable week in Sacramento, where he
involved himself in more than one terrible melee with the
strikers. Marcus had that quickness of temper and
passionate readiness to take offence which passes among his
class for bravery. But whatever were his motives, his
promptness to face danger could not for a moment be doubted.
After the strike he returned to Polk Street, and throwing
himself into the Improvement Club, heart, soul, and body,
soon became one of its ruling spirits. In a certain local
McTeague |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Under the Red Robe by Stanley Weyman: secretaries were writing, we stopped at a third door. Over all
brooded a silence which could be felt. The usher knocked,
opened, and, with his finger on his lip, pushed aside a curtain
and signed to me to enter. I did so and found myself behind a
screen.
'Is that M. de Berault?' asked a thin, high-pitched voice.
'Yes, Monseigneur,' I answered trembling.
'Then come, my friend, and talk to me.'
I went round the screen, and I know not how it was, the watching
crowd outside, the vacant ante-chamber in which I had stood, the
stillness and silence all seemed to be concentrated here, and to
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