| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Heart of the West by O. Henry: stress that had been laid upon his soul.
The saloon was small, and in its atmosphere the odours of meat and
drink struggled for the ascendancy. The pig and the cabbage wrestled
with hydrogen and oxygen. Behind the bar Schwegel laboured with an
assistant whose epidermal pores showed no signs of being obstructed.
Hot weinerwurst and sauerkraut were being served to purchasers of
beer. Curly shuffled to the end of the bar, coughed hollowly, and told
Schwegel that he was a Detroit cabinet-maker out of a job.
It followed as the night the day that he got his schooner and lunch.
"Was you acquainted maybe with Heinrich Strauss in Detroit?" asked
Schwegel.
Heart of the West |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Cavalry General by Xenophon: in face of one another.
[17] Or, "troops."
[18] Possibly on flank. See Courier, p. 35, on Spanish cavalry
tactics.
[19] Lit. "supposing both divisions to be backed by footmen," etc.
[20] Or, "achieve a much more decisive victory." Cf. "Cyrop." III.
iii. 28.
To make these dispositions is not hard; the difficulty is to discover
a body of men who will dash forward[21] and charge an enemy as above
described intelligently and loyally, with an eager spirit and
unfailing courage. That is a problem for a good cavalry general to
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Witch, et. al by Anton Chekhov: he used to sing in the choir; every ikon he remembered so well,
every corner. Here he was being married, he had to take a wife
for the sake of doing the proper thing, but he was not thinking
of that now, he had forgotten his wedding completely. Tears
dimmed his eyes so that he could not see the ikons, he felt heavy
at heart; he prayed and besought God that the misfortunes that
threatened him, that were ready to burst upon him to-morrow, if
not to-day, might somehow pass him by as storm-clouds in time of
drought pass over the village without yielding one drop of rain.
And so many sins were heaped up in the past, so many sins, all
getting away from them or setting them right was so beyond hope
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