| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Selected Writings of Guy De Maupassant by Guy De Maupassant: not return before Saturday, so you have still four days."
She responded to him with a sleepy smile.
"How rude you are." Then, shaking off her torpor, she added:
"Now, let somebody say something that will make us all laugh.
You, Monsieur Chenal who have the reputation of possessing a
larger fortune than the Duke of Richelieu, tell us a love story
in which you have been mixed up, anything you like."
Leon Chenal, an old painter, who had once keen very handsome,
very strong, who was very proud of his physique and very amiable,
took his long white beard in his hand and smiled; then, after a
few moments' reflection, he became suddenly grave.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: topmost leaves of the willows began to rustle softly, and little by
little the rippling rustle descended to their bases. She sat there
until daylight, unwearied, and wishing in her heart that the night
might prolong itself indefinitely. From the steppes came the ringing
neigh of the horses, and red streaks shone brightly in the sky. Bulba
suddenly awoke, and sprang to his feet. He remembered quite well what
he had ordered the night before. "Now, my men, you've slept enough!
'tis time, 'tis time! Water the horses! And where is the old woman?"
He generally called his wife so. "Be quick, old woman, get us
something to eat; the way is long."
The poor old woman, deprived of her last hope, slipped sadly into the
Taras Bulba and Other Tales |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: and report me to the conductor, who would then subject me
to a closer examination, which I knew well would be fatal to me.
Though I was not a murderer fleeing from justice, I felt perhaps
quite as miserable as such a criminal. The train was moving
at a very high rate of speed for that epoch of railroad travel,
but to my anxious mind it was moving far too slowly. Minutes were hours,
and hours were days during this part of my flight. After Maryland,
I was to pass through Delaware--another slave State, where slave-catchers
generally awaited their prey, for it was not in the interior of the State,
but on its borders, that these human hounds were most vigilant and active.
The border lines between slavery and freedom were the dangerous ones
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