| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Professor by Charlotte Bronte: the breakfast-room. I met him collectedly--I could not meet him
cheerfully; he was standing on the rug, his back to the fire--how
much did I read in the expression of his eye as my glance
encountered his, when I advanced to bid him good morning; how
much that was contradictory to my nature! He said "Good morning"
abruptly and nodded, and then he snatched, rather than took, a
newspaper from the table, and began to read it with the air of a
master who seizes a pretext to escape the bore of conversing with
an underling. It was well I had taken a resolution to endure for
a time, or his manner would have gone far to render insupportable
the disgust I had just been endeavouring to subdue. I looked at
 The Professor |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Witch, et. al by Anton Chekhov: carrot or a radish: broad at the head and narrow at the feet. . .
. Before sunset they brought him up to the deck and put him on a
plank; one end of the plank lay on the side of the ship, the
other on a box, placed on a stool. Round him stood the soldiers
and the officers with their caps off.
"Blessed be the Name of the Lord . . ." the priest began. "As it
was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be."
"Amen," chanted three sailors.
The soldiers and the officers crossed themselves and looked away
at the waves. It was strange that a man should be sewn up in
sailcloth and should soon be flying into the sea. Was it possible
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton: had cleared with the sympathies at the disposal of agreeable and
self-confident young men, it seemed to him natural to infer that
Mrs. Aubyn had refurnished in the same manner the void he was not
unwilling his departure should have left. But in the dissolution
of sentimental partnerships it is seldom that both associates are
able to withdraw their funds at the same time; and Glennard
gradually learned that he stood for the venture on which Mrs.
Aubyn had irretrievably staked her all. It was not the kind of
figure he cared to cut. He had no fancy for leaving havoc in his
wake and would have preferred to sow a quick growth of oblivion in
the spaces wasted by his unconsidered inroads; but if he supplied
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