| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Georgics by Virgil: For thee, Lyaeus?- with scrutinizing eye
First choose thy ground, and bid a pit be sunk
Deep in the solid earth, then cast the mould
All back again, and stamp the surface smooth.
If it suffice not, loose will be the land,
More meet for cattle and for kindly vines;
But if, rebellious, to its proper bounds
The soil returns not, but fills all the trench
And overtops it, then the glebe is gross;
Look for stiff ridges and reluctant clods,
And with strong bullocks cleave the fallow crust.
Georgics |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Death of the Lion by Henry James: of genius was the art of finding people at home. It was as if Mr.
Deedy had published reports without his young men's having, as
Pinhorn would have said, really been there. I was unregenerate, as
I have hinted, and couldn't be concerned to straighten out the
journalistic morals of my chief, feeling them indeed to be an abyss
over the edge of which it was better not to peer. Really to be
there this time moreover was a vision that made the idea of writing
something subtle about Neil Paraday only the more inspiring. I
would be as considerate as even Mr. Deedy could have wished, and
yet I should be as present as only Mr. Pinhorn could conceive. My
allusion to the sequestered manner in which Mr. Paraday lived - it
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Whirligigs by O. Henry: ently and reasonably, reminding him of the simple moun-
tain pleasures of which he had once been so fond, and
insisting upon the genuineness of the invitation.
Finally he landed Goree by telling him he was counting
upon his help in the engineering and transportation of a
large amount of felled timber from a high mountain-side
to a waterway. He knew that Goree had once invented
a device for this purpose -- a series of slides and chutes-
upon which he had justly prided himself. In an instant
the poor fellow, delighted at the idea of his being of use
to any one, had paper spread upon the table, and was
|
