| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: straight at the sun, their heads thrown back and their yellow
breasts a-quiver. The wind blew about us in warm, sweet gusts.
We rode slowly, with a pleasant sense of Sunday indolence.
We found the Shimerdas working just as if it were a week-day. Marek was
cleaning out the stable, and Antonia and her mother were making garden,
off across the pond in the draw-head. Ambrosch was up on the windmill tower,
oiling the wheel. He came down, not very cordially. When Jake asked
for the collar, he grunted and scratched his head. The collar belonged
to grandfather, of course, and Jake, feeling responsible for it, flared up.
`Now, don't you say you haven't got it, Ambrosch, because I know you have,
and if you ain't a-going to look for it, I will.'
My Antonia |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ursula by Honore de Balzac: I shall be sixteen in four months. Perhaps you will admit that we
are both too young and too inexperienced to understand the
miseries of a life entered upon without other fortune than that I
have received from the kindness of the late Monsieur de Jordy. My
godfather desires, moreover, not to marry me until I am twenty.
Who knows what fate may have in store for you in four years, the
finest years of your life? do not sacrifice them to a poor girl.
Having thus explained to you, monsieur, the opinions of my dear
godfather, who, far from opposing my happiness, seeks to
contribute to it in every way, and earnestly desires that his
protection, which must soon fail me, may be replaced by a
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Danny's Own Story by Don Marquis: You ought to get closer to the soil and to nature,
as is more healthy for a youth of your age. So for
an hour each day, between your studies, you will
romp and play in this sand. You may begin to
frolic now, William Dear, and then James will
sweep up the dirt again for to-morrow's frolic."
But William didn't frolic none. He jest looked
at that dirt in a sad kind o' way, and he says very
serious but very decided:
"Aunt Estelle, I shall NOT frolic." And they had
to let it go at that, fur he never would frolic none,
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