| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Forged Coupon by Leo Tolstoy: a pair of grey horses. Peter Nikolaevich
stretched out his hand in their direction--one
box was empty. He put out his foot--the horse
might have been lying down. But his foot did
not touch anything solid. "Where could they
have taken the horse?" he thought. They cer-
tainly had not harnessed it; all the sledges stood
still outside. Peter Nikolaevich went out of the
stable.
"Stepan, come here!" he called.
Stepan was the head of the workmen's gang.
The Forged Coupon |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: been seen at other hours. His delicacy had kept him from asking
any question about her at any time, and it was exactly the same
virtue that had left him so free to be decently civil to her at the
concert.
This happy advantage now served him anew, enabling him when she
finally met his eyes - it was after a fourth trial - to
predetermine quite fixedly his awaiting her retreat. He joined her
in the street as soon as she had moved, asking her if he might
accompany her a certain distance. With her placid permission he
went as far as a house in the neighbourhood at which she had
business: she let him know it was not where she lived. She lived,
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: two sisters as beautiful and innocent as angels, and I want them
to be happy. How am I to find two hundred thousand francs apiece
for them in the next five years? Now and then in life, you see,
you must play for heavy stakes, and it is no use wasting your
luck on low play."
"But you are only stating the problem that lies before every one
at the outset of his life, and you want to cut the Gordian knot
with a sword. If that is the way of it, dear boy, you must be an
Alexander, or to the hulks you go. For my own part, I am quite
contented with the little lot I mean to make for myself somewhere
in the country, when I mean to step into my father's shoes and
Father Goriot |
