| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Chinese Boy and Girl by Isaac Taylor Headland: the extent of calling that much-despised mother-in-law her
mother, and when overheard by her irate parent and asked
what she was saying, she answers:
I was saying the beans are boiling nice
And it's just about time to add the rice.
These are rather an indication of good cheer on the part
of the children than lack of filial affection. A parent must
be cruel indeed to make a girl willing to give up her mother
for a mother-in-law.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: much to them, for leave to live the life God meant him to live.
His soul within him was smothering to death; he wanted so much,
thought so much, and knew--nothing. There was nothing of which
he was certain, except the mill and things there. Of God and
heaven he had heard so little, that they were to him what fairy-
land is to a child: something real, but not here; very far off.
His brain, greedy, dwarfed, full of thwarted energy and unused
powers, questioned these men and women going by, coldly,
bitterly, that night. Was it not his right to live as they,--a
pure life, a good, true-hearted life, full of beauty and kind
words? He only wanted to know how to use the strength within
Life in the Iron-Mills |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton: sighing, as if it were not such an enviable thing to be in
an age when ladies were beginning to flaunt abroad
their Paris dresses as soon as they were out of the
Custom House, instead of letting them mellow under
lock and key, in the manner of Mrs. Archer's contemporaries.
"Yes; she's one of the few. In my youth," Miss
Jackson rejoined, "it was considered vulgar to dress in
the newest fashions; and Amy Sillerton has always told
me that in Boston the rule was to put away one's Paris
dresses for two years. Old Mrs. Baxter Pennilow, who
did everything handsomely, used to import twelve a
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