| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: it is so necessary to be a little noble!--and that if she had not me
to play with, she would probably marry and secure her future.
The next evening I went to call on Lena. I found her propped up
on the couch in her bay-window, with her foot in a big slipper.
An awkward little Russian girl whom she had taken into
her work-room had dropped a flat-iron on Lena's toe.
On the table beside her there was a basket of early summer
flowers which the Pole had left after he heard of the accident.
He always managed to know what went on in Lena's apartment.
Lena was telling me some amusing piece of gossip about one of her clients,
when I interrupted her and picked up the flower basket.
My Antonia |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling: want of reserve with which Bronckhorst treated his own dishonor
helped us to know that the evidence against Biel would be entirely
circumstantial and native. There were no letters; but Bronckhorst
said openly that he would rack Heaven and Earth until he saw Biel
superintending the manufacture of carpets in the Central Jail. Mrs.
Bronckhorst kept entirely to her house, and let charitable folks say
what they pleased. Opinions were divided. Some two-thirds of the
Station jumped at once to the conclusion that Biel was guilty; but a
dozen men who knew and liked him held by him. Biel was furious and
surprised. He denied the whole thing, and vowed that he would
thrash Bronckhorst within an inch of his life. No jury, we knew,
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Desert Gold by Zane Grey: mesquite and greasewood appeared among the rocks. Ladd gave the
word to tie up horses and go forward on foot.
The narrow neck of the pass opened and descended into a valley
half a mile wide, perhaps twice that in length. It had apparently
unscalable slopes of weathered rock leading up to beetling walls.
With floor bare and hard and white, except for a patch of green
mesquite near the far end it was a lurid and desolate spot, the
barren bottom of a desert bowl.
"Keep down, boys" said Ladd. "There's the waterhole an' hosses
have sharp eyes. Shore the Yaqui figgered this place. I never
seen its like for a trap."
Desert Gold |
