| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Witch, et. al by Anton Chekhov: it would not have seemed so empty. Granny screamed, Marya cried,
and the little girls, looking at her, cried, too. The old father,
feeling guilty, sat in the corner with bowed head and said
nothing. And Nikolay, too, was silent. Granny loved him and was
sorry for him, but now, forgetting her pity, she fell upon him
with abuse, with reproaches, shaking her fist right in his face.
She shouted that it was all his fault; why had he sent them so
little when he boasted in his letters that he was getting fifty
roubles a month at the Slavyansky Bazaar? Why had he come, and
with his family, too? If he died, where was the money to come
from for his funeral . . . ? And it was pitiful to look at
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Call of the Canyon by Zane Grey: never did. We both hated the idea. You're calling spades spades, Carley,
but you seem to be riding a morbid, impractical thesis. Well, our young
American girl or bride goes in for being rushed or she goes in for fads,
the ultra stuff you mentioned. New York City gets all the great artists,
lecturers, and surely the great fakirs. The New York women support them.
The men laugh, but they furnish the money. They take the women to the
theaters, but they cut out the reception to a Polish princess, a lecture by
an Indian magician and mystic, or a benefit luncheon for a Home for
Friendless Cats. The truth is most of our young girls or brides have a
wonderful enthusiasm worthy of a better cause. What is to become of their
surplus energy, the bottled-lightning spirit so characteristic of modern
The Call of the Canyon |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac: winking at his wife.
To pick out the greatest gossip, the sharpest tongue, the most
inveterate cackler of the neighborhood! It meant that Madame Vernier
was to take a witness to the scene between the traveller and the
lunatic which should keep the town in laughter for a month. Monsieur
and Madame Vernier played their part so well that Gaudissart had no
suspicions, and straightway fell into the trap. He gallantly offered
his arm to Madame Vernier, and believed that he made, as they went
along, the conquest of both ladies, for those benefit he sparkled with
wit and humor and undetected puns.
The house of the pretended banker stood at the entrance to the Valley
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