| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: he had found in them, or merely the shifting of her own point of
view, that had restored his features to their normal aspect? The
longer she looked, the more definitely the change affirmed
itself. The lines of painful tension had vanished, and such
traces of fatigue as lingered were of the kind easily
attributable to steady mental effort. He glanced up, as if drawn
by her gaze, and met her eyes with a smile.
"I'm dying for my tea, you know; and here's a letter for you," he
said.
She took the letter he held out in exchange for the cup she
proffered him, and, returning to her seat, broke the seal with
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Buttered Side Down by Edna Ferber: been as attractive when a young girl as she was when an old girl,
she never would have been an old girl and head of Spiegel's corset
department at a salary of something very comfortably over one
hundred and twenty-five a month (and commissions). Effie had
improved with the years, and ripened with experience. She knew her
value. At twenty she had been pale, anaemic and bony, with a
startled-faun manner and bad teeth. Years of saleswomanship had
broadened her, mentally and physically, until she possessed a wide
and varied knowledge of that great and diversified subject known as
human nature. She knew human nature all the way from the fifty-
nine-cent girdles to the twenty-five-dollar made-to-orders. And if
Buttered Side Down |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: him as he sat at meat the coarse food seemed delicate, and the
water had the taste of good wine, and the whole house became full
of the odour and sweetness of nard.
Renan in his VIE DE JESUS - that gracious fifth gospel, the gospel
according to St. Thomas, one might call it - says somewhere that
Christ's great achievement was that he made himself as much loved
after his death as he had been during his lifetime. And certainly,
if his place is among the poets, he is the leader of all the
lovers. He saw that love was the first secret of the world for
which the wise men had been looking, and that it was only through
love that one could approach either the heart of the leper or the
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