| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: Jules looked out mechanically for the pinks, and found them on the
outer sill of a sash window between two filthy drain-pipes. So here
were flowers; here, a garden, two yards long and six inches wide;
here, a wheat-ear; here, a whole life epitomized; but here, too, all
the miseries of that life. A ray of light falling from heaven as if by
special favor on those puny flowers and the vigorous wheat-ear brought
out in full relief the dust, the grease, and that nameless color,
peculiar to Parisian squalor, made of dirt, which crusted and spotted
the damp walls, the worm-eaten balusters, the disjointed window-
casings, and the door originally red. Presently the cough of an old
woman, and a heavy female step, shuffling painfully in list slippers,
Ferragus |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar by Edgar Rice Burroughs: past--that it had been his?
What had been his past? He shook his head. Vaguely the
memory of his apish childhood passed slowly in review--
then came a strangely tangled mass of faces, figures
and events which seemed to have no relation to Tarzan
of the Apes, and yet which were, even in their
fragmentary form, familiar.
Slowly and painfully, recollection was attempting to
reassert itself, the hurt brain was mending, as the
cause of its recent failure to function was being
slowly absorbed or removed by the healing processes of
Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Voice of the City by O. Henry: shine in your eyes here. Say, Dawson, I'll get the
old man to give you a letter to somebody about a job
when I get back home. You've helped me a lot to-
night. I don't believe I could have gone through
the night if I hadn't struck you."
"Thank you," said Vallance. "Do you lie down
or sit up on these when you sleep?
For hours Vallance gazed almost without winking
at the stars through the branches of the trees and
listened to the sharp slapping of horses' hoofs on the
sea of asphalt to the south His mind was active,
The Voice of the City |
