| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Buttered Side Down by Edna Ferber: and it was home, all right, but not my home. It was the same, but
I was different. Eleven years away from anything makes it shrink,
if you know what I mean. I guess maybe you do. I remember that I
used to think that the Grand View Hotel was a regular little
oriental palace that was almost too luxurious to be respectable,
and that the traveling men who stopped there were gods, and just to
prance past the hotel after supper had the Atlantic City board walk
looking like a back alley on a rainy night. Well, everything had
sort of shriveled up just like that. The popcorn gave me
indigestion, and I burned the skin off my nose popping it.
Kneading bread gave me the backache, and the blamed stuff wouldn't
Buttered Side Down |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: discern the figure of Lady Eleanore, strangely combining an
almost queenly stateliness with the grace and beauty of a maiden
in her teens. A singular tale had gone abroad among the ladies of
the province, that their fair rival was indebted for much of the
irresistible charm of her appearance to a certain article of
dress--an embroidered mantle--which had been wrought by the most
skilful artist in London, and possessed even magical properties
of adornment. On the present occasion, however, she owed nothing
to the witchery of dress, being clad in a riding habit of velvet,
which would have appeared stiff and ungraceful on any other form.
The coachman reined in his four black steeds, and the whole
Twice Told Tales |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton: another pause, "she wished the best for me so often, and now, at
last, it's through her that it's come to me. But for her I
shouldn't have known you--it's through her that I've found you.
Sometimes, do you know?--that makes it hardest--makes me most
intolerable to myself. Can't you see that it's the worst thing
I've got to face? I sometimes think I could have borne it better
if you hadn't understood! I took everything from her--everything--
even to the poor shelter of loyalty she'd trusted in--the only
thing I could have left her!--I took everything from her, I
deceived her, I despoiled her, I destroyed her--and she's given me
YOU in return!"
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