| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: estranged, but in the very presence of what they had given up it
was impossible not to be sorry for her. He had taken from her so
much more than she had taken from him. He argued with her again,
told her she could now have the altar to herself; but she only
shook her head with pleading sadness, begging him not to waste his
breath on the impossible, the extinct. Couldn't he see that in
relation to her private need the rites he had established were
practically an elaborate exclusion? She regretted nothing that had
happened; it had all been right so long as she didn't know, and it
was only that now she knew too much and that from the moment their
eyes were open they would simply have to conform. It had doubtless
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Breaking Point by Mary Roberts Rinehart: faithful hand to rebuild, some faithful soul to worship.
He was somewhat daunted at the size and bustling activity of Norada.
Its streets were paved and well-lighted, there were a park and a
public library, and the clerk at the Commercial Hotel asked him if
he wished a private bath! But the development was helpful in one
way. In the old Norada a newcomer might have been subjected to a
friendly but inquisitive interest. In this grown-up and
self-centered community a man might come and go unnoticed.
And he had other advantages. The pack, as he cynically thought of
them, would have started at the Clark ranch and the cabin. He would
get to them, of course, but he meant to start on the outside of the
The Breaking Point |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: country. He told me that a conjecture of a change of climate
had sometimes crossed his mind; but that he thought
that the greater portion of land, now incapable of cultivation,
but covered with Indian ruins, had been reduced to this state
by the water-conduits, which the Indians formerly constructed
on so wonderful a scale, having been injured by
neglect and by subterranean movements. I may here mention,
that the Peruvians actually carried their irrigating
streams in tunnels through hills of solid rock. Mr. Gill told
me, he had been employed professionally to examine one:
he found the passage low, narrow, crooked, and not of uniform
The Voyage of the Beagle |
