| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas: On the seventh of January between seven and eight hundred
tradesmen had assembled in Paris to discuss a new tax which
was to be levied on house property. They deputed ten of
their number to wait upon the Duke of Orleans, who,
according to his custom, affected popularity. The duke
received them and they informed him that they were resolved
not to pay this tax, even if they were obliged to defend
themselves against its collectors by force of arms. They
were listened to with great politeness by the duke, who held
out hopes of easier measures, promised to speak in their
behalf to the queen, and dismissed them with the ordinary
Twenty Years After |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Dream Life and Real Life by Olive Schreiner: twenty horses offered me when I could only ride one; it was for me they
waited at street corners; it was what I said and did that they talked of.
Partly I liked it. I had lived alone all my life; no one ever had told me
I was beautiful and a woman. I believed them. I did not know it was
simply a fashion, which one man had set and the rest followed
unreasoningly. I liked them to ask me to marry them, and to say, No. I
despised them. The mother heart had not swelled in me yet; I did not know
all men were my children, as the large woman knows when her heart is grown.
I was too small to be tender. I liked my power. I was like a child with a
new whip, which it goes about cracking everywhere, not caring against what.
I could not wind it up and put it away. Men were curious creatures, who
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: possessing only twenty-one. The aspect of the two opponents
was now singular. Apart from motions, a complete diorama
of the fluctuations of the game went on in their eyes.
A diminutive candle-flame was mirrored in each pupil,
and it would have been possible to distinguish therein
between the moods of hope and the moods of abandonment,
even as regards the reddleman, though his facial muscles
betrayed nothing at all. Wildeve played on with the
recklessness of despair.
"What's that?" he suddenly exclaimed, hearing a rustle;
and they both looked up.
Return of the Native |
