| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Black Beauty by Anna Sewell: "Pray, stop; I think I can help you if you will let me."
The man laughed.
"You see," she said, "you do not give him a fair chance;
he cannot use all his power with his head held back as it is
with that check-rein; if you would take it off I am sure he would do better
-- do try it," she said persuasively, "I should be very glad if you would."
"Well, well," said Jakes, with a short laugh, "anything to please a lady,
of course. How far would you wish it down, ma'am?"
"Quite down, give him his head altogether."
The rein was taken off, and in a moment I put my head down to my very knees.
What a comfort it was! Then I tossed it up and down several times
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: When I said to myself: "THEY have the manners to be silent,
and you, trusted as you are, the baseness to speak!"
I felt myself crimson and I covered my face with my hands.
After these secret scenes I chattered more than ever, going on
volubly enough till one of our prodigious, palpable hushes occurred--
I can call them nothing else--the strange, dizzy lift or swim
(I try for terms!) into a stillness, a pause of all life, that had
nothing to do with the more or less noise that at the moment we
might be engaged in making and that I could hear through any deepened
exhilaration or quickened recitation or louder strum of the piano.
Then it was that the others, the outsiders, were there.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from O Pioneers! by Willa Cather: hedge, at the two dark figures under the tree.
They had fallen a little apart from each other,
and were perfectly still-- No, not quite; in
a white patch of light, where the moon shone
through the branches, a man's hand was pluck-
ing spasmodically at the grass.
Suddenly the woman stirred and uttered a
cry, then another, and another. She was living!
She was dragging herself toward the hedge!
Frank dropped his gun and ran back along the
O Pioneers! |
