| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: the Marquise. "I know why you have left your lair. I will pay you
twice over. Hold your peace."
She took a bag of gold from the ebony cabinet, and threw it
contemptuously at the old woman's feet. The chink of the gold was
potent enough to excite a smile on the Georgian's impassive face.
"I come at the right moment for you, my sister," said Henri. "The law
will ask of you----"
"Nothing," replied the Marquise. "One person alone might ask for a
reckoning for the death of this girl. Cristemio is dead."
"And the mother," said Henri, pointing to the old woman. "Will you not
always be in her power?"
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Wyoming by William MacLeod Raine: stampeding cattle that were almost upon them. Down the steep
sides of the gorge two riders were galloping recklessly. It was a
race for life between them and the first of the herd, and they
won by scarce more than a length. Across the sand the horses
plowed, and as they swept past the two trembling young women each
rider bent from the saddle without slackening speed, and snatched
one almost from under the very hoofs of the leaders.
The danger was not past. As the horses swerved and went forward
with the rush Helen knew that a stumble would fling not only her
and the man who had saved her, but also the horse down to death.
They must contrive to hold their own in that deadly rush until a
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: rather, as it happened, under the charm; whereas the "swagger"
things, the modern, the monstrous, the famous things, those he had
more particularly, like thousands of ingenuous enquirers every
year, come over to see, were exactly his sources of dismay. They
were as so many set traps for displeasure, above all for reaction,
of which his restless tread was constantly pressing the spring. It
was interesting, doubtless, the whole show, but it would have been
too disconcerting hadn't a certain finer truth saved the situation.
He had distinctly not, in this steadier light, come over ALL for
the monstrosities; he had come, not only in the last analysis but
quite on the face of the act, under an impulse with which they had
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