| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton: she stood in the biting wind at the corner near the beer-saloon,
where the sun had once beat down on her so fiercely. At length an
empty car appeared, its yellow flank emblazoned with the name of
Mrs. Hochmuller's suburb, and Ann Eliza was presently jolting past
the narrow brick houses islanded between vacant lots like giant
piles in a desolate lagoon. When the car reached the end of its
journey she got out and stood for some time trying to remember
which turn Mr. Ramy had taken. She had just made up her mind to
ask the car-driver when he shook the reins on the backs of his lean
horses, and the car, still empty, jogged away toward Hoboken.
Ann Eliza, left alone by the roadside, began to move
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Voice of the City by O. Henry: performance of "The King's Bath-Robe."
There was a jolly small party at one of the tables
that drew many eyes. Miss Carrington, petite, mar-
vellous, bubbling, electric, fame-drunken, shall be
named first. Herr Goldstein follows, sonorous, curly-
haired, heavy, a trifle anxious, as some bear that had
caught, somehow, a butterfly in his claws. Next,
a man condemned to a newspaper, sad, courted,
armed, analyzing for press agent's dross every sen-
tence that was poured over him, eating his a la New-
burg in the silence of greatness. To conclude, a
The Voice of the City |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Fanny Herself by Edna Ferber: furnace. She flung open the furnace door. Red and purple
the coal bed gleamed, with little white flame sprites
dancing over it. Fanny stared at it a moment, fascinated.
Her face was set, her eyes brilliant. Suddenly she flung
the tightly-rolled apron into the heart of the gleaming
mass. She shut her eyes then. The fire seemed to hold its
breath for a moment. Then, with a gasp, it sprang upon its
food. The bundle stiffened, writhed, crumpled, sank, lay a
blackened heap, was dissolved. The fire bed glowed red and
purple as before, except for a dark spot in its heart.
Fanny shivered a little. She shut the furnace door and went
Fanny Herself |
