| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from One Basket by Edna Ferber: at the piano never ceased playing. She played mostly by request.
A prospective purchaser would mumble something in the ear of one
of the clerks. The fat man with the megaphone would bawl out,
"Hicky Boola, Miss Ryan!" And Miss Ryan would oblige. She
made a hideous rattle and crash and clatter of sound.
Terry joined the crowds about the counter. The girl at the piano
was not looking at the keys. Her head was screwed around over
her left shoulder and as she played she was holding forth
animatedly to a girl friend who had evidently dropped in from
some store or office during the lunch hour. Now and again the
fat man paused in his vocal efforts to reprimand her for her
One Basket |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: skirts so complete that they seemed to do it of themselves, falling and
folding in the soft, delicate curves of discretion.
For the sake of not seeming too curious about this party, I turned from
watching it before the launch had begun to move, and it was immediately
hidden from me by the bank, so that I did not see it get away. As I
crossed an open space toward the gardens I found myself far behind the
other pilgrims, whose wandering bands I could half discern among winding
walks and bordering bushes. I was soon taken into somewhat reprimanding
charge by an admirable, if important, negro, who sighted me from a door
beneath the porch of the house, and advanced upon me speedily. From him I
learned at once the rule of the place, that strangers were not allowed to
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy: ingenuousness has been abused. Melbury's heretofore confidential
candor towards his gentlemanly son-in-law was displaced by a
feline stealth that did injnry to his every action, thought, and
mood. He knew that a woman once given to a man for life took, as
a rule, her lot as it came and made the best of it, without
external interference; but for the first time he asked himself why
this so generally should be so. Moreover, this case was not, he
argued, like ordinary cases. Leaving out the question of Grace
being anything but an ordinary woman, her peculiar situation, as
it were in mid-air between two planes of society, together with
the loneliness of Hintock, made a husband's neglect a far more
The Woodlanders |
