| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Fanny Herself by Edna Ferber: enough, it was the one that stayed in her memory long, long
after the other had faded.
"Oh, Clancy, I've made such a mess of it all. Such a
miserable mess. The little girl in the red tam was worth
ten of me. I don't see how you can--care for me."
"You're the most wonderful woman in the world," said Heyl,
"and the most beautiful and splendid."
He must have meant it, for he was looking down at her as he
said it, and we know that the skin had been peeled off her
nose by the mountain winds and sun, that her lips were
cracked and her cheeks rough, and that she was red-eyed and
Fanny Herself |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Book of Remarkable Criminals by H. B. Irving: and fetch the police. Just think what a fool the respectable
gentleman would have looked when the officers came!"
Such callousness is almost unsurpassed in the annals of criminal
insensibility. Nero fiddling over burning Rome, Thurtell fresh
from the murder of Weare, inviting Hunt, the singer and his
accomplice, to "tip them a stave" after supper, Edwards, the
Camberwell murderer, reading with gusto to friends the report of
a fashionable divorce case, post from the murder of a young
married couple and their baby--even examples such as these pale
before the levity of the "little demon," as the French detectives
christened Gabrielle.
A Book of Remarkable Criminals |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Options by O. Henry: superior to mere beauty, she must establish something in the nature of
a salon--the only one in Paloma.
"Don't you think that Shakespeare was a great writer?" she would ask,
with such a pretty little knit of her arched brows that the late
Ignatius Donnelly, himself, had he seen it, could scarcely have saved
his Bacon.
Ileen was of the opinion, also, that Boston is more cultured than
Chicago; that Rosa Bonheur was one of the greatest of women painters;
that Westerners are more spontaneous and open-hearted than Easterners;
that London must be a very foggy city, and that California must be
quite lovely in the springtime. And of many other opinions indicating
Options |
