| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Simple Soul by Gustave Flaubert: gallop! Felicite turned around and threw patches of grass in his eyes.
He hung his head, shook his horns and bellowed with fury. Madame
Aubain and the children, huddled at the end of the field, were trying
to jump over the ditch. Felicite continued to back before the bull,
blinding him with dirt, while she shouted to them to make haste.
Madame Aubain finally slid into the ditch, after shoving first
Virginia and then Paul into it, and though she stumbled several times
she managed, by dint of courage, to climb the other side of it.
The bull had driven Felicite up against a fence; the foam from his
muzzle flew in her face and in another minute he would have
disembowelled her. She had just time to slip between two bars and the
A Simple Soul |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: air."
"The house will be down about our ears!" cried Tabitha, as the
wind shook it with increasing violence.
"Let it fall!" said Peter, folding his arms, as he seated himself
upon the chest.
"No, no, my old friend Peter," said John Brown. "I have house
room for you and Tabby, and a safe vault for the chest of
treasure. To-morrow we will try to come to an agreement about the
sale of this old house. Real estate is well up, and I could
afford you a pretty handsome price."
"And I," observed Peter Goldthwaite, with reviving spirits, "have
Twice Told Tales |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Alcibiades I by Plato: son of Zeus. But, for all that, we are far inferior to them. For they are
descended 'from Zeus,' through a line of kings--either kings of Argos and
Lacedaemon, or kings of Persia, a country which the descendants of
Achaemenes have always possessed, besides being at various times sovereigns
of Asia, as they now are; whereas, we and our fathers were but private
persons. How ridiculous would you be thought if you were to make a display
of your ancestors and of Salamis the island of Eurysaces, or of Aegina, the
habitation of the still more ancient Aeacus, before Artaxerxes, son of
Xerxes. You should consider how inferior we are to them both in the
derivation of our birth and in other particulars. Did you never observe
how great is the property of the Spartan kings? And their wives are under
|
