| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Heart of the West by O. Henry: Another paroxysm wrung him, and he leaned limply against a convenient
baggage truck. Raidler waited patiently, glancing around at the white
hats, short overcoats, and big cigars thronging the platform. "You're
from the No'th, ain't you, bud?" he asked when the other was partially
recovered. "Come down to see the fight?"
"Fight!" snapped McGuire. "Puss-in-the-corner! 'Twas a hypodermic
injection. Handed him just one like a squirt of dope, and he's asleep,
and no tanbark needed in front of his residence. Fight!" He rattled a
bit, coughed, and went on, hardly addressing the cattleman, but rather
for the relief of voicing his troubles. "No more dead sure t'ings for
me. But Rus Sage himself would have snatched at it. Five to one dat de
Heart of the West |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Land of Footprints by Stewart Edward White: But in Equatorial Africa the simple bands of velvet black, against
the spangled brightnesses that make up the visual night world,
must give way in interest to the other world of sound. The air
hums with an undertone of insects; the plain and hill and jungle
are populous with voices furtive or bold. In daytime one sees
animals enough, in all conscience, but only at night does he
sense the almost oppressive feeling of the teeming life about
him. The darkness is peopled. Zebra bark, bucks blow or snort or
make the weird noises of their respective species; hyenas howl;
out of an immense simian silence a group of monkeys suddenly
break into chatterings; ostriches utter their deep hollow boom;
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Men of Iron by Howard Pyle: and the village; yeomen's and farmers' sons, to be sure, but,
nevertheless, lads of his own age, and that, after all, is the
main requirement for friendship in boyhood's world. Then there
was the river to bathe in; there were the hills and valleys to
roam over, and the wold and woodland, with their wealth of nuts
and birds'-nests and what not of boyhood's treasures.
Once he gained a triumph that for many a day was very sweet under
the tongue of his memory. As was said before, he had been three
times to the market-town at fair-time, and upon the last of these
occasions he had fought a bout of quarterstaff with a young
fellow of twenty, and had been the conqueror. He was then only a
Men of Iron |
