| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: thought it might be a feint, and stayed a long time barefooted in
the cold passage, her ear to the crack; but the breathing went on
too steadily and naturally to be other than that of a man in a
sound sleep. She crept back to her room reassured, and stood in
the window watching the moon set through the trees of the park.
The sky was misty and starless, and after the moon went down the
night was pitch black. She knew the time had come, and stole
along the passage, past her husband's door--where she stopped
again to listen to his breathing--to the top of the stairs.
There she paused a moment, and assured herself that no one was
following her; then she began to go down the stairs in the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: already beginning to make pretty clothes for herself.
After the long winter evenings on the prairie, with Ambrosch's
sullen silences and her mother's complaints, the Harlings'
house seemed, as she said, `like Heaven' to her.
She was never too tired to make taffy or chocolate cookies for us.
If Sally whispered in her ear, or Charley gave her three winks,
Tony would rush into the kitchen and build a fire in the range
on which she had already cooked three meals that day.
While we sat in the kitchen waiting for the cookies to bake or the taffy
to cool, Nina used to coax Antonia to tell her stories--about the calf
that broke its leg, or how Yulka saved her little turkeys from drowning
My Antonia |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Georgics by Virgil: With iron-tipped muzzles. What they milk at dawn,
Or in the daylight hours, at night they press;
What darkling or at sunset, this ere morn
They bear away in baskets- for to town
The shepherd hies him- or with dash of salt
Just sprinkle, and lay by for winter use.
Nor be thy dogs last cared for; but alike
Swift Spartan hounds and fierce Molossian feed
On fattening whey. Never, with these to watch,
Dread nightly thief afold and ravening wolves,
Or Spanish desperadoes in the rear.
Georgics |
