| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: I believe you. I see - I see!" I went on, conscious, with the full
turn of the wheel, of my great delusion, my false view of the poor
man's attitude. What I saw, though I couldn't say it, was that his
wife hadn't thought him worth enlightening. This struck me as
strange for a woman who had thought him worth marrying. At last I
explained it by the reflexion that she couldn't possibly have
married him for his understanding. She had married him for
something else.
He was to some extent enlightened now, but he was even more
astonished, more disconcerted: he took a moment to compare my
story with his quickened memories. The result of his meditation
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Lesson of the Master by Henry James: puffed his cigarette sighingly, with the sense of something rare
possibly missed. He wandered away with his regret and moved slowly
round the room, looking at the old prints on the walls. In this
attitude he presently felt a hand on his shoulder and a friendly
voice in his ear "This is good. I hoped I should find you. I came
down on purpose." St. George was there without a change of dress
and with a fine face - his graver one - to which our young man all
in a flutter responded. He explained that it was only for the
Master - the idea of a little talk - that he had sat up, and that,
not finding him, he had been on the point of going to bed.
"Well, you know, I don't smoke - my wife doesn't let me," said St.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: of nearly all of us at the close of the day, the hour of prayer, when
all nature is hushed save for the voices of the bells. The sea gleamed
pale and wan, but its hues changed, and the surface took all the
colors of steel. The sky was almost overspread with livid gray, but
down in the west there were long narrow bars like streaks of blood;
while lines of bright light in the eastern sky, sharp and clean as if
drawn by the tip of a brush, were separated by folds of cloud, like
the wrinkles on an old man's brow. The whole scene made a background
of ashen grays and half-tints, in strong contrast to the bale-fires of
the sunset. If written language might borrow of spoken language some
of the bold figures of speech invented by the people, it might be said
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