| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: to the successful rival's credit reaches the ear of the defeated,
it is held by plain men of no pretensions that his mouth is, in the
circumstance, almost necessarily closed. Your Church and Damien's
were in Hawaii upon a rivalry to do well: to help, to edify, to set
divine examples. You having (in one huge instance) failed, and
Damien succeeded, I marvel it should not have occurred to you that
you were doomed to silence; that when you had been outstripped in
that high rivalry, and sat inglorious in the midst of your well-
being, in your pleasant room - and Damien, crowned with glories and
horrors, toiled and rotted in that pigsty of his under the cliffs
of Kalawao - you, the elect who would not, were the last man on
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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: `But you'll be lonesome. You'll get tired of this sort of life,
and you'll want a family.'
`Not me. I like to be lonesome. When I went to work for
Mrs. Thomas I was nineteen years old, and I had never slept
a night in my life when there weren't three in the bed.
I never had a minute to myself except when I was off
with the cattle.'
Usually, when Lena referred to her life in the country at all,
she dismissed it with a single remark, humorous or mildly cynical.
But tonight her mind seemed to dwell on those early years.
She told me she couldn't remember a time when she was so little that
My Antonia |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Confidence by Henry James: said Angela, in her letter, "that I had made a point of it,
but that we certainly ought to give you a little credit for it.
But I could n't insist upon this, for fear of sounding a wrong
note and exciting afresh what I suppose he would be pleased
to term his jealousy. He asked me where you had gone,
and when I told him--'Ah, how he must hate me!' he exclaimed.
'There you are quite wrong,' I answered. 'He feels as kindly
to you as--as I do.' He looked as if he by no means believed this;
but, indeed, he looks as if he believed nothing at all.
He is quite upset and demoralized. He stayed half an hour
and paid me his visit--trying hard to 'please' me again!
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