| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Roads of Destiny by O. Henry: voiced and with his undiminished smile.
"I don't want to seem unappreciative, old man," he said, with a
youth's somewhat too-early spontaneity of address, "but, you see, I
can't accept anything from a stranger. I know you're all right, and
I'm tremendously obliged, but I couldn't think of borrowing from
anybody. You see, I'm Marcus Clayton--the Claytons of Roanoke County,
Virginia, you know. The young lady is Miss Eva Bedford--I reckon
you've heard of the Bedfords. She's seventeen and one of the Bedfords
of Bedford County. We've eloped from home to get married, and we
wanted to see New York. We got in this afternoon. Somebody got my
pocketbook on the ferry-boat, and I had only three cents in change
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from O Pioneers! by Willa Cather: rich soil yields heavy harvests; the dry, bracing
climate and the smoothness of the land make
labor easy for men and beasts. There are few
scenes more gratifying than a spring plowing
in that country, where the furrows of a single
field often lie a mile in length, and the brown
earth, with such a strong, clean smell, and such
a power of growth and fertility in it, yields itself
eagerly to the plow; rolls away from the shear,
not even dimming the brightness of the metal,
with a soft, deep sigh of happiness. The wheat-
O Pioneers! |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: from having experienced the change of feeling toward Napoleon and
the French- who from being foes had suddenly become friends- that
had taken place at headquarters and in Boris. In the army, Bonaparte
and the French were still regarded with mingled feelings of anger,
contempt, and fear. Only recently, talking with one of Platov's
Cossack officers, Rostov had argued that if Napoleon were taken
prisoner he would be treated not as a sovereign, but as a criminal.
Quite lately, happening to meet a wounded French colonel on the
road, Rostov had maintained with heat that peace was impossible
between a legitimate sovereign and the criminal Bonaparte. Rostov
was therefore unpleasantly struck by the presence of French officers
War and Peace |
