| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: aggravate the severity of my fate, that my little pittance would
soon melt away. I endeavoured to obtain needlework; but, not having
been taught early, and my hands being rendered clumsy by hard work,
I did not sufficiently excel to be employed by the ready-made linen
shops, when so many women, better qualified, were suing for it.
The want of a character prevented my getting a place; for, irksome
as servitude would have been to me, I should have made another
trial, had it been feasible. Not that I disliked employment,
but the inequality of condition to which I must have submitted.
I had acquired a taste for literature, during the five years
I had lived with a literary man, occasionally conversing with
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Gentle Grafter by O. Henry: four years at a stretch.
"The wonder to me is," says Caligula, "that Uncle Robert Lee's boys
didn't chase the Grant and Sherman outfit clear up into Hudson's Bay.
It would have made me that mad to eat this truck they call mahogany!"
"Hog and hominy," I explains, "is the staple food of this section."
"Then," says Caligula, "they ought to keep it where it belongs. I
thought this was a hotel and not a stable. Now, if we was in Muskogee
at the St. Lucifer House, I'd show you some breakfast grub. Antelope
steaks and fried liver to begin on, and venison cutlets with /chili
con carne/ and pineapple fritters, and then some sardines and mixed
pickles; and top it off with a can of yellow clings and a bottle of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: came to my island were not properly those which we call Caribbees,
but islanders, and other barbarians of the same kind, who inhabited
nearer to our side than the rest.
In short, I visited several of these islands to no purpose; some I
found were inhabited, and some were not; on one of them I found
some Spaniards, and thought they had lived there; but speaking with
them, found they had a sloop lying in a small creek hard by, and
came thither to make salt, and to catch some pearl-mussels if they
could; but that they belonged to the Isle de Trinidad, which lay
farther north, in the latitude of 10 and 11 degrees.
Thus coasting from one island to another, sometimes with the ship,
Robinson Crusoe |
