| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from McTeague by Frank Norris: back on the interest of her lottery money and the pittance
she derived from the manufacture of the Noah's ark animals,
a little over thirty dollars a month. No, no, it was not to
be thought of. It could not be that their means of
livelihood was to be thus stricken from them.
A fortnight went by. "I guess we're all right, Mac," Trina
allowed herself to say. "It looks as though we were all
right. How are they going to tell whether you're practising
or not?"
That day a second and much more peremptory notice was served
upon McTeague by an official in person. Then suddenly Trina
McTeague |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: Understands about Public Topics and--But, darn it, why didn't I try? . . .
Tanis!"
III
He was harassed and puzzled by it, but he found that he was turning toward
youth, as youth. The girl who especially disturbed him--though he had never
spoken to her--was the last manicure girl on the right in the Pompeian Barber
Shop. She was small, swift, black-haired, smiling. She was nineteen,
perhaps, or twenty. She wore thin salmon-colored blouses which exhibited her
shoulders and her black-ribboned camisoles.
He went to the Pompeian for his fortnightly hair-trim. As always, he felt
disloyal at deserting his neighbor, the Reeves Building Barber Shop. Then,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne: who once used you unkindly, but not from his heart.
The poor monk blush'd as red as scarlet. MON DIEU! said he,
pressing his hands together - you never used me unkindly. - I
should think, said the lady, he is not likely. I blush'd in my
turn; but from what movements, I leave to the few who feel, to
analyze. - Excuse me, Madame, replied I, - I treated him most
unkindly; and from no provocations. - 'Tis impossible, said the
lady. - My God! cried the monk, with a warmth of asseveration which
seem'd not to belong to him - the fault was in me, and in the
indiscretion of my zeal. - The lady opposed it, and I joined with
her in maintaining it was impossible, that a spirit so regulated as
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