| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Historical Mystery by Honore de Balzac: Marthe left the room to obey the order. When she returned she found
Michu on his knees, praying.
"What is the matter?" she said, frightened.
The bailiff took his wife round the waist and drew her to him, saying
in a voice of deep feeling: "If we never see each other again
remember, my poor wife, that I loved you well. Follow minutely the
instructions which you will find in a letter buried at the foot of the
larch in that copse. It is enclosed in a tin tube. Do not touch it
until after my death. And remember, Marthe, whatever happens to me,
that in spite of man's injustice, my arm has been the instrument of
the justice of God."
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: as he might say, focused and studied in diminishing perspective and
as by a rest for the elbow.
It was with these considerations that his present attention was
charged - they perfectly availed to make what he saw portentous.
He COULDN'T, by any lapse, have blocked that aperture; and if he
hadn't, if it was unthinkable, why what else was clear but that
there had been another agent? Another agent? - he had been
catching, as he felt, a moment back, the very breath of him; but
when had he been so close as in this simple, this logical, this
completely personal act? It was so logical, that is, that one
might have TAKEN it for personal; yet for what did Brydon take it,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Battle of the Books by Jonathan Swift: last use - of kindling a fire. When I behold this I sighed, and
said within myself, "Surely mortal man is a broomstick!" Nature
sent him into the world strong and lusty, in a thriving condition,
wearing his own hair on his head, the proper branches of this
reasoning vegetable, till the axe of intemperance has lopped off
his green boughs, and left him a withered trunk; he then flies to
art, and puts on a periwig, valuing himself upon an unnatural
bundle of hairs, all covered with powder, that never grew on his
head; but now should this our broomstick pretend to enter the
scene, proud of those birchen spoils it never bore, and all covered
with dust, through the sweepings of the finest lady's chamber, we
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