| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Gentle Grafter by O. Henry: the color of the back of a twenty dollar gold certificate, blue eyes
and a system of beauty that would make the girl on the cover of a July
magazine look like a cook on a Monongahela coal barge.
"She had on a low necked dress covered with silver spangles, and
diamond rings and ear bobs. Her arms was bare; and she was using a
desk telephone with one hand, and drinking tea with the other.
"'Well, boys,' says she after a bit, 'what is it?'
"I told her in as few words as possible what we wanted for Bill, and
the price we could pay.
"'Those western appointments,' says she, 'are easy. Le'me see, now,'
says she, 'who could put that through for us. No use fooling with the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Misalliance by George Bernard Shaw: ask me to come and live with him in this rrrrrrrabbit hutch, and take
my bread from his hand, and ask him for pocket money, and wear soft
clothes, and be his woman! his wife! Sooner than that, I would stoop
to the lowest depths of my profession. I would stuff lions with food
and pretend to tame them. I would deceive honest people's eyes with
conjuring tricks instead of real feats of strength and skill. I would
be a clown and set bad examples of conduct to little children. I
would sink yet lower and be an actress or an opera singer, imperilling
my soul by the wicked lie of pretending to be somebody else. All this
I would do sooner than take my bread from the hand of a man and make
him the master of my body and soul. And so you may tell your Johnny
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Alexander's Bridge by Willa Cather: "this time I'm going to end it!"
On the afternoon of the third day out,
Alexander was sitting well to the stern,
on the windward side where the chairs were
few, his rugs over him and the collar of his
fur-lined coat turned up about his ears.
The weather had so far been dark and raw.
For two hours he had been watching the low,
dirty sky and the beating of the heavy rain
upon the iron-colored sea. There was a long,
oily swell that made exercise laborious.
Alexander's Bridge |
