| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: learned upon the bench, and was at no pains whether to conceal or to
express his disappointment. "Well, ye have a long jaunt before ye yet!"
he might observe, yawning, and fall back on his own thoughts (as like as
not) until the time came for separation, and my lord would take the
decanter and the glass, and be off to the back chamber looking on the
Meadows, where he toiled on his cases till the hours were small. There
was no "fuller man" on the bench; his memory was marvellous, though
wholly legal; if he had to "advise" extempore, none did it better; yet
there was none who more earnestly prepared. As he thus watched in the
night, or sat at table and forgot the presence of his son, no doubt but
he tasted deeply of recondite pleasures. To be wholly devoted to some
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: to return alone in the phaeton. On the road, Sarrasine determined to
carry off La Zambinella. He passed the whole day forming plans, each
more extravagant than the last. At nightfall, as he was going out to
inquire of somebody where his mistress lived, he met one of his
fellow-artists at the door.
" 'My dear fellow,' he said, I am sent by our ambassador to invite you
to come to the embassy this evening. He gives a magnificent concert,
and when I tell you that La Zambinella will be there--'
" 'Zambinella!' cried Sarrasine, thrown into delirium by that name; 'I
am mad with love of her.'
" 'You are like everybody else,' replied his comrade.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from O Pioneers! by Willa Cather: The houses on the Divide were small and were
usually tucked away in low places; you did not
see them until you came directly upon them.
Most of them were built of the sod itself, and
were only the unescapable ground in another
form. The roads were but faint tracks in the
grass, and the fields were scarcely noticeable.
The record of the plow was insignificant, like
the feeble scratches on stone left by prehistoric
races, so indeterminate that they may, after all,
be only the markings of glaciers, and not a rec-
O Pioneers! |
