| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from One Basket by Edna Ferber: When Orville Platt ate a soft-boiled egg he concentrated on it.
He treated it as a great adventure. Which, after all, it is.
Few adjuncts of our daily life contain the element of chance that
is to be found in a three-minute breakfast egg.
This was Orville Platt's method of attack: first, he chipped off
the top, neatly. Then he bent forward and subjected it to a
passionate and relentless scrutiny. Straightening--preparatory
to plunging his spoon therein--he flapped his right elbow. It
wasn't exactly a flap; it was a pass between a hitch and a flap,
and presented external evidence of a mental state. Orville Platt
always gave that little preliminary jerk when he was
One Basket |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: And all day long on the sea the jaws are crushing the meat,
The steersman eats at the helm, the rowers munch at the oar,
And at length, when their bellies are full, overboard with the store!"
Now was the word made true, and soon as the bait was bare,
All the pigs of Taiarapu raised their snouts in the air.
Songs were recited, and kinship was counted, and tales were told
How war had severed of late but peace had cemented of old
The clans of the island. "To war," said they, "now set we an end,
And hie to the Namunu-ura even as a friend to a friend."
So judged, and a day was named; and soon as the morning broke,
Canoes were thrust in the sea and the houses emptied of folk.
Ballads |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Schoolmistress and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov: another five or six years! . . ."
"What for?"
"The horse isn't mine, I must give it back. . . . I must bury my
old woman. . . . How quickly it is all ended in this world! Your
honor, Pavel Ivanitch! A cigarette-case of birchwood of the best!
I'll turn you croquet balls. . . ."
The doctor went out of the ward with a wave of his hand. It was
all over with the turner.
ON OFFICIAL DUTY
THE deputy examining magistrate and the district doctor were
going to an inquest in the village of Syrnya. On the road they
The Schoolmistress and Other Stories |
