| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Men of Iron by Howard Pyle: thou cease not troubling them. Thou hast bred mischief enow for
thyself already."
"No matter for that," said Myles; "it is not to be borne that
they order others of us about as they do. I mean to speak to them
to-night, and tell them it shall not be."
He was as good as his word. That night, as the youngsters were
shouting and romping and skylarking, as they always did before
turning in, he stood upon his cot and shouted: "Silence! List to
me a little!" And then, in the hush that followed-- "I want those
bachelors to hear this: that we squires serve them no longer, and
if they would ha' some to wait upon them, they must get them
Men of Iron |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: quaking sphagnum. I often think that I should like to have my
house front on this mass of dull red bushes, omitting other
flower plots and borders, transplanted spruce and trim box, even
graveled walks--to have this fertile spot under my windows, not a
few imported barrowfuls of soil only to cover the sand which was
thrown out in digging the cellar. Why not put my house, my
parlor, behind this plot, instead of behind that meager
assemblage of curiosities, that poor apology for a Nature and
Art, which I call my front yard? It is an effort to clear up and
make a decent appearance when the carpenter and mason have
departed, though done as much for the passer-by as the dweller
Walking |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: with a precocious power of thought, would not rest satisfied with his
mother's assertion that she was perfectly well. He scanned her face
with uneasy forebodings; the exact danger he did not know, but dimly
he felt it threatening in those purple rings about her eyes, in the
deepening hollows under them, and the feverish red that deepened in
her face. If Marie's play began to tire her, his sensitive tact was
quick to discover this, and he would call to his brother:
"Come, Marie! let us run in to breakfast, I am hungry!"
But when they reached the door, he would look back to catch the
expression on his mother's face. She still could find a smile for him,
nay, often there were tears in her eyes when some little thing
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