| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: problems, health and well-being questions, financial difficulties, and--"
They listened to her with adoring attention. They looked genteel. They looked
ironed-out. They coughed politely, and crossed their legs with quietness, and
in expensive linen handkerchiefs they blew their noses with a delicacy
altogether optimistic and refined.
As for Babbitt, he sat and suffered.
When they were blessedly out in the air again, when they drove home through a
wind smelling of snow and honest sun, he dared not speak. They had been too
near to quarreling, these days. Mrs. Babbitt forced it:
"Did you enjoy Mrs. Mudge's talk?"
"Well I--What did you get out of it?"
|
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: home. This damp wind chills my very bones. Come and preach
your Saint-Simonian doctrines' to-morrow to Kirby's hands. Let
them have a clear idea of the rights of the soul, and I'll
venture next week they'll strike for higher wages. That will be
the end of it."
"Will you send the coach-driver to this side of the mills?"
asked Kirby, turning to Wolfe.
He spoke kindly: it was his habit to do so. Deborah, seeing
the puddler go, crept after him. The three men waited outside.
Doctor May walked up and down, chafed. Suddenly he stopped.
"Go back, Mitchell! You say the pocket and the heart of the
Life in the Iron-Mills |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad: doubted that we were looking at a fugitive, incredible as it appeared
to us. He was haggard, as though he had not slept for weeks; he had
become lean, as though he had not eaten for days. His cheeks were
hollow, his eyes sunk, the muscles of his chest and arms twitched
slightly as if after an exhausting contest. Of course it had been a
long swim off to the schooner; but his face showed another kind of
fatigue, the tormented weariness, the anger and the fear of a struggle
against a thought, an idea--against something that cannot be grappled,
that never rests--a shadow, a nothing, unconquerable and immortal,
that preys upon life. We knew it as though he had shouted it at us.
His chest expanded time after time, as if it could not contain the
Tales of Unrest |
