| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter, that was as cool
as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all
desire. They were here, and they accepted Tom and me, making only a
polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained. They knew
that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening too
would be over and casually put away. It was sharply different from the
West, where an evening was hurried from phase to phase toward its
close, in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer
nervous dread of the moment itself.
"You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy," I confessed on my second glass
of corky but rather impressive claret. "Can't you talk about crops or
The Great Gatsby |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery: so unromantic. Mrs. Lynde says there is no danger of my ever
being one, but you can never tell. I feel just now that I may
grow up to be sensible yet. But perhaps that is only because I'm
tired. I simply couldn't sleep last night for ever so long. I
just lay awake and imagined the concert over and over again.
That's one splendid thing about such affairs--it's so lovely to
look back to them."
Eventually, however, Avonlea school slipped back into its old
groove and took up its old interests. To be sure, the concert
left traces. Ruby Gillis and Emma White, who had quarreled over
a point of precedence in their platform seats, no longer sat at
Anne of Green Gables |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: and the pine-siskins are more melodious, and the slate-coloured
juncos, flitting about the camp, are as garrulous as chippy-birds.
All these varied notes come and go through the tangle of morning
dreams. And now the noisy blue-jay is calling "Thief--thief--
thief!" in the distance, and a pair of great pileated woodpeckers
with crimson crests are laughing loudly in the swamp over some
family joke. But listen! what is that harsh creaking note? It is
the cry of the Northern shrike, of whom tradition says that he
catches little birds and impales them on sharp thorns. At the
sound of his voice the concert closes suddenly and the singers
vanish into thin air. The hour of music is over; the commonplace
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