| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Faith of Men by Jack London: ranting, old bull mammoth, like a second flood, wiping them, root
and branch, off the face of the earth! Do you wonder that the
blood-soaked earth cried out to high God? Or that I grabbed the
hand-axe and took the trail?"
"The hand-axe?" I exclaimed, startled out of myself by the picture.
"The hand-axe, and a big bull mammoth, thirty feet long, twenty
feet--"
Nimrod joined me in my merriment, chuckling gleefully. "Wouldn't
it kill you?" he cried. "Wasn't it a beaver's dream? Many's the
time I've laughed about it since, but at the time it was no
laughing matter, I was that danged mad, what of the gun and Klooch.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: Jacques grew thin, dark circles surrounded his sweet blue eyes; rather
than trouble his mother, he suffered in silence. I advised him to tell
his father he was tired when the count's temper was violent; but that
expedient proved unavailing, and it became necessary to substitute the
old huntsman as a teacher in place of the father, who could with
difficulty be induced to resign his pupil. Angry reproaches and
contentions began once more; the count found a text for his continual
complaints in the base ingratitude of women; he flung the carriage,
horses, and liveries in his wife's face twenty times a day. At last a
circumstance occurred on which a man with his nature and his disease
naturally fastened eagerly. The cost of the buildings at the Cassine
The Lily of the Valley |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton: window, and Ann Eliza half hoped she would come in; but after a
desultory inspection she went on.
"Maybe you don't fancy me?" Mr. Ramy suggested,
discountenanced by Ann Eliza's silence.
A word of assent was on her tongue, but her lips refused it.
She must find some other way of telling him.
"I don't say that."
"Well, I always kinder thought we was suited to one another,"
Mr. Ramy continued, eased of his momentary doubt. "I always liked
de quiet style--no fuss and airs, and not afraid of work." He
spoke as though dispassionately cataloguing her charms.
|
