| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: while I am talking? Do not these muscles of mine represent a
hundred loaves of bread? and is not my thought the abstract of ten
thousand of these crumbs of truth with which you would choke off my
speech?
[The above remark must be conditioned and qualified for the vulgar
mind. The reader will of course understand the precise amount of
seasoning which must be added to it before he adopts it as one of
the axioms of his life. The speaker disclaims all responsibility
for its abuse in incompetent hands.]
This business of conversation is a very serious matter. There are
men that it weakens one to talk with an hour more than a day's
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from McTeague by Frank Norris: hers, his heavy jaw protruding, his little eyes twinkling
meanly.
"No," he shouted. "No, no, NO. Do you hear? NO."
Trina cowered before him. Then suddenly she began to sob
aloud, weeping partly at his strange brutality, partly at
the disappointment of his failure to find employment.
McTeague cast a contemptuous glance about him, a glance that
embraced the dingy, cheerless room, the rain streaming down
the panes of the one window, and the figure of his weeping
wife.
"Oh, ain't this all FINE?" he exclaimed. "Ain't it
McTeague |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: in Lily, and she was often bored by the relation of her friend's
philanthropic efforts, but today her quick dramatizing fancy
seized on the contrast between her own situation and that
represented by some of Gerty's "cases." These were young girls,
like herself; some perhaps pretty, some not without a trace of
her finer sensibilities. She pictured herself leading such a life
as theirs--a life in which achievement seemed as squalid as
failure--and the vision made her shudder sympathetically. The
price of the dressing-case was still in her pocket; and drawing
out her little gold purse she slipped a liberal fraction of the
amount into Miss Farish's hand.
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