| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Voice of the City by O. Henry: you should have one, on the precariousness of the pro-
fession of heir presumptive."
"People might like you, Old Bryson," said Gillian,
always unruffled, "if you wouldn't moralize. I asked
you to tell me what I could do with a thousand
dollars."
"You?" said Bryson, with a gentle laugh.
"Why, Bobby Gillian, there's only one logical thing
you could do. You can go buy Miss Lotta Lauriere
a diamond pendant with the money, and then take
yourself off to Idaho and inflict, your presence upon a
The Voice of the City |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from End of the Tether by Joseph Conrad: canal seemed to turn into pitch. Captain Whalley
crossed it.
The turning to the right, which was his way to his
hotel, was only a very few steps farther. He stopped
again (all the houses of the sea-front were shut up, the
quayside was deserted, but for one or two figures of
natives walking in the distance) and began to reckon the
amount of his bill. So many days in the hotel at so
many dollars a day. To count the days he used his
fingers: plunging one hand into his pocket, he jingled a
few silver coins. All right for three days more; and
End of the Tether |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: will lead you straight to it; for it, too, has its place merely,
and does not occupy all space. I pass from it as from a bean
field into the forest, and it is forgotten. In one half-hour I
can walk off to some portion of the earth's surface where a man
does not stand from one year's end to another, and there,
consequently, politics are not, for they are but as the
cigar-smoke of a man.
The village is the place to which the roads tend, a sort of
expansion of the highway, as a lake of a river. It is the body of
which roads are the arms and legs--a trivial or quadrivial place,
the thoroughfare and ordinary of travelers. The word is from the
Walking |
