| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: spirits rose with eating, as some men's do with drink. He could
not help, too, rolling his large eyes round him as he ate, and
chuckling with the possibility that he might one day be lord of
all this scene of almost unimaginable luxury and splendor. Then,
he thought, how soon he 'd turn his back upon the old
schoolhouse; snap his fingers in the face of Hans Van Ripper, and
every other niggardly patron, and kick any itinerant pedagogue
out of doors that should dare to call him comrade!
Old Baltus Van Tassel moved about among his guests with a
face dilated with content and goodhumor, round and jolly as the
harvest moon. His hospitable attentions were brief, but
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe: I went from her when I was only thirteen, and I never saw her again!"
St. Clare rested his head on his hands, and did not speak
for some minutes. After a while, he looked up, and went on:
"What poor, mean trash this whole business of human virtue is!
A mere matter, for the most part, of latitude and longitude,
and geographical position, acting with natural temperament. The
greater part is nothing but an accident! Your father, for example,
settles in Vermont, in a town where all are, in fact, free and
equal; becomes a regular church member and deacon, and in due time
joins an Abolition society, and thinks us all little better than
heathens. Yet he is, for all the world, in constitution and habit,
Uncle Tom's Cabin |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte: 'directs me to wait on myself: I will. I'm not going to act the
lady among you, for fear I should starve.'
'Gooid Lord!' he muttered, sitting down, and stroking his ribbed
stockings from the knee to the ankle. 'If there's to be fresh
ortherings - just when I getten used to two maisters, if I mun hev'
a MISTRESS set o'er my heead, it's like time to be flitting. I
niver DID think to see t' day that I mud lave th' owld place - but
I doubt it's nigh at hand!'
This lamentation drew no notice from me: I went briskly to work,
sighing to remember a period when it would have been all merry fun;
but compelled speedily to drive off the remembrance. It racked me
Wuthering Heights |
