| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: most part, she had made herself what she was; that she had cold-
bloodedly set about complying with the demands of life and making
her position comfortable and masterful. That was why, everyone
said, she had married Howard Noble. Women who did not get
through life so well as Caroline, who could not make such good
terms either with fortune or their husbands, who did not find
their health so unfailingly good, or hold their looks so well, or
manage their children so easily, or give such distinction to all
they did, were fond of stamping Caroline as a materialist, and
called her hard.
The impression of cold calculation, of having a definite
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: the same. The traits that distinguished these peoples in the past
have been gradually extinguishing them ever since. Of these traits,
stagnating influences upon their career, perhaps the most important
is the great quality of impersonality.
If we take, through the earth's temperate zone, a belt of country
whose northern and southern edges are determined by certain limiting
isotherms, not more than half the width of the zone apart, we shall
find that we have included in a relatively small extent of surface
almost all the nations of note in the world, past or present.
Now if we examine this belt, and compare the different parts of it
with one another, we shall be struck by a remarkable fact.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Odyssey by Homer: Then Amphinomus drew his sword and made straight at Ulysses to
try and get him away from the door; but Telemachus was too quick
for him, and struck him from behind; the spear caught him
between the shoulders and went right through his chest, so that
he fell heavily to the ground and struck the earth with his
forehead. Then Telemachus sprang away from him, leaving his
spear still in the body, for he feared that if he stayed to draw
it out, some one of the Achaeans might come up and hack at him
with his sword, or knock him down, so he set off at a run, and
immediately was at his father's side. Then he said:
"Father, let me bring you a shield, two spears, and a brass
The Odyssey |
