| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Heart of the West by O. Henry: silk handkerchief, and shoes tied up in bowknots.
"'Afternoon!' says I to him. 'You now ride with a equestrian who is
commonly called Dead-Moral-Certainty Judson, on account of the way I
shoot. When I want a stranger to know me I always introduce myself
before the draw, for I never did like to shake hands with ghosts.'
"'Ah,' says he, just like that--'Ah, I'm glad to know you, Mr. Judson.
I'm Jackson Bird, from over at Mired Mule Ranch.'
"Just then one of my eyes saw a roadrunner skipping down the hill with
a young tarantula in his bill, and the other eye noticed a rabbit-hawk
sitting on a dead limb in a water-elm. I popped over one after the
other with my forty-five, just to show him. 'Two out of three,' says
Heart of the West |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Outlaw of Torn by Edgar Rice Burroughs: the man, loathing and contempt for the base born, the
memory of that exalted moment when those handsome
lips had clung to hers, pride in the fearlessness of a
champion who dared come alone among twenty thou-
sand enemies for the sake of a promise made her; but
stronger than all the rest two stood out before her
mind's eye like living things--the degradation of his
low birth, and the memory of the great love she had
cherished all these long and dreary months.
And these two fought out their battle in the girl's
breast. In those few brief moments of bewilderment
The Outlaw of Torn |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: three panes. We look at the white earth, and the rainbow, and the blue
sky; and oh, we want it, we want--we do not know what. We cry as though
our heart was broken. When one lifts our little body from the window we
cannot tell what ails us. We run away to play.
So looks the first year.
II.
Now the pictures become continuous and connected. Material things still
rule, but the spiritual and intellectual take their places.
In the dark night when we are afraid we pray and shut our eyes. We press
our fingers very hard upon the lids, and see dark spots moving round and
round, and we know they are heads and wings of angels sent to take care of
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