| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from O Pioneers! by Willa Cather: sewing in the evening, often thought about
what it must be like down there where Emil
was; where there were flowers and street bands
everywhere, and carriages rattling up and
down, and where there was a little blind boot-
black in front of the cathedral who could play
any tune you asked for by dropping the lids
of blacking-boxes on the stone steps. When
everything is done and over for one at twenty-
three, it is pleasant to let the mind wander
forth and follow a young adventurer who has
O Pioneers! |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Adam Bede by George Eliot: struck nine before he left the work-yard at the village, and set
off, through the fields, towards the Farm. It was an immense
relief to him, as he came near the Home Close, to see Mr. Poyser
advancing towards him, for this would spare him the pain of going
to the house. Mr. Poyser was walking briskly this March morning,
with a sense of spring business on his mind: he was going to cast
the master's eye on the shoeing of a new cart-horse, carrying his
spud as a useful companion by the way. His surprise was great
when he caught sight of Adam, but he was not a man given to
presentiments of evil.
"Why, Adam, lad, is't you? Have ye been all this time away and
Adam Bede |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Ruling Passion by Henry van Dyke: more romantic and appropriate. You will look in vain for Bytown on
the map now. Nor will you find the old saw-mill there any longer,
wasting a vast water-power to turn its dripping wheel and cut up a
few pine-logs into fragrant boards. There is a big steam-mill a
little farther up the river, which rips out thousands of feet of
lumber in a day; but there are no more pine-logs, only sticks of
spruce which the old lumbermen would have thought hardly worth
cutting. And down below the dam there is a pulp-mill, to chew up
the little trees and turn them into paper, and a chair factory, and
two or three industrial establishments, with quite a little colony
of French-Canadians employed in them as workmen.
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