| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte: he was glad of it for the sake of his wife and children, so soon to
be widowed and fatherless. After I had sat a few minutes, and read
a little for the comfort and edification of himself and his
afflicted wife, I left them; but I had not proceeded fifty yards
before I encountered Mr. Weston, apparently on his way to the same
abode. He greeted me in his usual quiet, unaffected way, stopped
to inquire about the condition of the sick man and his family, and
with a sort of unconscious, brotherly disregard to ceremony took
from my hand the book out of which I had been reading, turned over
its pages, made a few brief but very sensible remarks, and restored
it; then told me about some poor sufferer he had just been
Agnes Grey |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Copy-Cat & Other Stories by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: like a penetrating poultice of mustard, and the
results were peculiar.
Johnny, being bidden of a rainy day during the
midsummer vacation to remain in the house, to
keep quiet, read a book, and be a good boy, obeyed,
but his obedience was of a doubtful measure of
wisdom.
Johnny got a book out of his uncle Jonathan Trum-
bull's dark little library while Jonathan was walking
sedately to the post-office, holding his dripping
umbrella at a wonderful slant of exactness, without
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James: thrift she had quite mastered that of merely spending words enough
to keep him imperturbably and continuously going.
He was charmed with the panorama, not knowing--or at any rate not
at all showing that he knew--what far other images peopled her mind
than the women in the navy caps and the shop-boys in the blazers.
His observations on these types, his general interpretation of the
show, brought home to her the prospect of Chalk Farm. She wondered
sometimes that he should have derived so little illumination,
during his period, from the society at Cocker's. But one evening
while their holiday cloudlessly waned he gave her such a proof of
his quality as might have made her ashamed of her many
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