| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from O Pioneers! by Willa Cather: very strong. It was a man, certainly, who car-
ried her, but he was like no man she knew; he
was much larger and stronger and swifter, and
he carried her as easily as if she were a sheaf
of wheat. She never saw him, but, with eyes
closed, she could feel that he was yellow like the
sunlight, and there was the smell of ripe corn-
fields about him. She could feel him approach,
bend over her and lift her, and then she could
feel herself being carried swiftly off across the
fields. After such a reverie she would rise has-
O Pioneers! |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Vailima Prayers & Sabbath Morn by Robert Louis Stevenson: forest house, bless our island helpers. Thou who hast made for us
this place of ease and hope, accept and inflame our gratitude; help
us to repay, in service one to another, the debt of thine unmerited
benefits and mercies, so that, when the period of our stewardship
draws to a conclusion, when the windows begin to be darkened, when
the bond of the family is to be loosed, there shall be no
bitterness of remorse in our farewells.
Help us to look back on the long way that Thou hast brought us, on
the long days in which we have been served, not according to our
deserts, but our desires; on the pit and the miry clay, the
blackness of despair, the horror of misconduct, from which our feet
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The War in the Air by H. G. Wells: exactly like the opening of a mouth. It laughed with a gust of
flames. They were reflected redly in the observant goggles of
the gentleman who owned the tarpaulin. Everybody recoiled.
"Save the trailer!" cried some one, and that was the last round
in the battle. But the trailer could not be detached; its
wicker-work had caught, and it was the last thing to burn. A
sort of hush fell upon the gathering. The petrol burnt low, the
wicker-work trailer banged and crackled. The crowd divided
itself into an outer circle of critics, advisers, and secondary
characters, who had played undistinguished parts or no parts at
all in the affair, and a central group of heated and distressed
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