| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Polly of the Circus by Margaret Mayo: back the impulse that was pulling him toward the door. Again and
again he set his teeth.
It was uncertainty that gnawed at him so. Was she ill? Could she
need him? Was she sorry for having left him? Would she be glad if
he went for her and brought her back with him? He recalled the
hysterical note in her behaviour the day that she went away; how
she had pleaded, only a few moments before Jim came, never to be
separated from him. Had she really cared for Jim and for the old
life? Why had she never written? Was she ashamed? Was she sorry
for what she had done? What could it mean? He threw his hands
above his head with a gesture of despair. A moment later, he
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Shakespeare: To weigh how once I suffer'd in your crime.
O! that our night of woe might have remember'd
My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits,
And soon to you, as you to me, then tender'd
The humble salve, which wounded bosoms fits!
But that your trespass now becomes a fee;
Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.
CXXI
'Tis better to be vile than vile esteem'd,
When not to be receives reproach of being;
And the just pleasure lost, which is so deem'd
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: their wailing accents to the testimony borne by all the
Canterbury pilgrims against the world from which they fled.
"We are tired and hungry!" cried they. "Is it far to the Shaker
village?"
The Shaker youth and maiden looked mournfully into each other's
eyes. They had but stepped across the threshold of their homes,
when lo! the dark array of cares and sorrows that rose up to warn
them back. The varied narratives of the strangers had arranged
themselves into a parable; they seemed not merely instances of
woful fate that had befallen others, but shadowy omens of
disappointed hope and unavailing toil, domestic grief and
The Snow Image |
