| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell: speak with such certainty about what Ashley's future actions would
be? What did he know of him?
"Yes, they'll go back immediately," replied Ashley and he avoided
Scarlett's dumbfounded gaze.
"Have you lost your mind?" she cried. "You'll lose all the money
on the lease and what kind of labor can you get, anyway?"
"I'll use free darkies," said Ashley.
"Free darkies! Fiddle-dee-dee! You know what their wages will
cost and besides you'll have the Yankees on your neck every minute
to see if you're giving them chicken three times a day and tucking
them to sleep under eiderdown quilts. And if you give a lazy darky
Gone With the Wind |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: this simple history, in which we seek to interest those souls that are
naturally grave and reflective and find their sustenance in tender
emotions. If the writer, like the surgeon beside his dying friend, is
filled with a species of reverence for the subject he is handling,
should not the reader share in that inexplicable feeling? Is it so
difficult to put ourselves in unison with the vague and nervous
sadness which casts its gray tints all about us, and is, in fact, a
semi-illness, the gentle sufferings of which are often pleasing? If
the reader is of those who sometimes think upon the dear ones they
have lost, if he is alone, if the day is waning or the night has come,
let him read on; otherwise, he should lay aside this book at once. If
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: have your India shawls on?"
She looked upon him in silence, with a sparkling eye but an
indecipherable expression; and that was all that Archie was ever
destined to learn of the battle of the India shawls.
"Do none of them ever come here to see you?" he inquired.
"Mr. Archie," said she, "I hope that I ken my place better. It would be
a queer thing, I think, if I was to clamjamfry up your faither's house -
that I should say it! - wi' a dirty, black-a-vised clan, no ane o' them
it was worth while to mar soap upon but just mysel'! Na, they're all
damnifeed wi' the black Ellwalds. I have nae patience wi' black folk."
Then, with a sudden consciousness of the case of Archie, "No that it
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