| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Call of the Canyon by Zane Grey: They all laughed, and so the moment of readjustment passed. Presently
Carley found herself sitting at table, directly across from Flo. A pearly
whiteness was slowly warming out of the girl's face. Her frank clear eyes
met Carley's and they had nothing to hide. Carley's first requisite for
character in a woman was that she be a thoroughbred. She lacked it often
enough herself to admire it greatly in another woman. And that moment saw a
birth of respect and sincere liking in her for this Western girl. If Flo
Hutter ever was a rival she would be an honest one.
Not long after supper Tom Hutter winked at Carley and said he "reckoned on
general principles it was his hunch to go to bed." Mrs. Hutter suddenly
discovered tasks to perform elsewhere. And Flo said in her cool sweet
The Call of the Canyon |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: for a man to pay his way; when that is quite accomplished, he may
plunge into what eccentricity he likes; but emphatically not till
then. Till then, he must pay assiduous court to the bourgeois who
carries the purse. And if in the course of these capitulations he
shall falsify his talent, it can never have been a strong one, and
he will have preserved a better thing than talent - character. Or
if he be of a mind so independent that he cannot stoop to this
necessity, one course is yet open: he can desist from art, and
follow some more manly way of life.
I speak of a more manly way of life, it is a point on which I must
be frank. To live by a pleasure is not a high calling; it involves
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: "We mightn't, as it were, have got across--?"
"To where we are--no. We're HERE"--she made her weak emphasis.
"And much good does it do us!" was her friend's frank comment.
"It does us the good it can. It does us the good that IT isn't
here. It's past. It's behind," said May Bartram. "Before--" but
her voice dropped.
He had got up, not to tire her, but it was hard to combat his
yearning. She after all told him nothing but that his light had
failed--which he knew well enough without her. "Before--?" he
blankly echoed.
"Before you see, it was always to COME. That kept it present."
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