| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: staff now clapped to the ribs of his deep, resonant chest, now
swinging in the air with the remembered jauntiness of the private
soldier; and all the while his toes looking out of his boots, and
his shirt looking out of his elbows, and death looking out of his
smile, and his big, crazy frame shaken by accesses of cough.
He would often go the whole way home with me: often to borrow a
book, and that book always a poet. Off he would march, to continue
his mendicant rounds, with the volume slipped into the pocket of
his ragged coat; and although he would sometimes keep it quite a
while, yet it came always back again at last, not much the worse
for its travels into beggardom. And in this way, doubtless, his
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: learn the truth in order to stop this gossip, at any rate among the
circle of my own friends. To be the dupes or the accomplices of such
an error is too false a position for true friends to occupy."
"But what is it? what has happened?" asked mother and daughter.
Madame de Gyas thereupon allowed herself the happiness of repeating
all the current gossip, not sparing her two friends a single stab.
Natalie and Madame Evangelista looked at each other and laughed, but
they fully understood the meaning of the tale and the motives of their
friend. The Spanish lady took her revenge very much as Celimene took
hers on Arsinoe.
"My dear, are you ignorant--you who know the provinces so well--can
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Heart of the West by O. Henry: were growling and swearing over a belated game of checkers. Heavy
odours of stewed meat, hot grease, and cheap coffee hung like a
depressing fog about the house.
Lena lit the stump of a candle and sat limply upon her wooden chair.
She was eleven years old, thin and ill-nourished. Her back and limbs
were sore and aching. But the ache in her heart made the biggest
trouble. The last straw had been added to the burden upon her small
shoulders. They had taken away Grimm. Always at night, however tired
she might be, she had turned to Grimm for comfort and hope. Each time
had Grimm whispered to her that the prince or the fairy would come and
deliver her out of the wicked enchantment. Every night she had taken
Heart of the West |
