| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Message by Honore de Balzac: burning tears falling on your hands, you would know what
gratitude is, when it follows so closely upon the benefit. Her
eyes shone with a feverish glitter, a faint ray of happiness
gleamed out of her terrible suffering, as she grasped my hands in
hers, and said, in a choking voice:
"Ah! you love! May you be happy always. May you never lose her
whom you love."
She broke off, and fled away with her treasure.
Next morning, this night-scene among my dreams seemed like a
dream; to make sure of the piteous truth, I was obliged to look
fruitlessly under my pillow for the packet of letters. There is
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson: Then I heard her voice sound very small and muffled in my clothes.
"Did you kiss her truly?" she asked.
There went through me so great a heave of surprise that I was all shook
with it.
"Miss Grant?" I cried, all in a disorder. "Yes, I asked her to kiss me
good-bye, the which she did."
"Ah, well!" said she, "you have kissed me too, at all events."
At the strangeness and sweetness of that word, I saw where we had
fallen; rose, and set her on her feet.
"This will never do," said I. "This will never, never do. O Catrine,
Catrine!" Then there came a pause in which I was debarred from any
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett: errand to my sitting-room, and told, it might be very commonplace
news of the day, or, as happened one misty summer night, all that
lay deepest in her heart. It was in this way that I came to know
that she had loved one who was far above her.
"No, dear, him I speak of could never think of me," she said.
"When we was young together his mother didn't favor the match, an'
done everything she could to part us; and folks thought we both
married well, but't wa'n't what either one of us wanted most; an'
now we're left alone again, an' might have had each other all the
time. He was above bein' a seafarin' man, an' prospered more
than most; he come of a high family, an' my lot was plain an' hard-
|
