| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: miles of red shaggy prairie that stretched before his cabin. He
knew it in all the deceitful loveliness of its early summer, in all
the bitter barrenness of its autumn. He had seen it smitten by all
the plagues of Egypt. He had seen it parched by drought, and
sogged by rain, beaten by hail, and swept by fire, and in the
grasshopper years he had seen it eaten as bare and clean as bones
that the vultures have left. After the great fires he had seen it
stretch for miles and miles, black and smoking as the floor of
hell.
He rose slowly and crossed the room, dragging his big feet
heavily as though they were burdens to him. He looked out of the
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp: Mothers tell me that it is a dreadful business finding one husband; how much
more painful then to have to look for three at once!--the babies are so nearly
the same age that they only just escaped being twins. But I won't look.
I can imagine nothing more uncomfortable than a son-in-law, and besides,
I don't think a husband is at all a good thing for a girl to have.
I shall do my best in the years at my disposal to train them so to love
the garden, and out-door life, and even farming, that, if they have a spark
of their mother in them, they will want and ask for nothing better.
My hope of success is however exceedingly small, and there is probably
a fearful period in store for me when I shall be taken every day during
the winter to the distant towns to balls--a poor old mother shivering
Elizabeth and her German Garden |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Duchess of Padua by Oscar Wilde: I have heard
That sailors dying of thirst upon a raft,
Poor castaways upon a lonely sea,
Dream of green fields and pleasant water-courses,
And then wake up with red thirst in their throats,
And die more miserably because sleep
Has cheated them: so they die cursing sleep
For having sent them dreams: I will not curse you
Though I am cast away upon the sea
Which men call Desolation.
GUIDO
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