| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: I've come strange to a new country myself, but I never forgot hens
are a good thing to have, no matter what you don't have.
`Just as you say, ma'm,' said Jake, `but I hate to think of Krajiek
getting a leg of that old rooster.' He tramped out through the long
cellar and dropped the heavy door behind him.
After breakfast grandmother and Jake and I bundled ourselves up
and climbed into the cold front wagon-seat. As we approached
the Shimerdas', we heard the frosty whine of the pump and
saw Antonia, her head tied up and her cotton dress blown about her,
throwing all her weight on the pump-handle as it went up and down.
She heard our wagon, looked back over her shoulder, and, catching up
My Antonia |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Redheaded Outfield by Zane Grey: a pitcher who would die of shame if he could not
fool a one-eyed batter. But Sam swooped down
and upon the first ball and drove it back toward
the pitcher. Muck could not get out of the way
and the ball made his leg buckle under him. Then
that hit glanced off to begin a marvelous exhibition
of high and erratic bounding about the infield.
Daddy hunched over his soap-box bench and
hugged himself. He was farsighted and he saw
victory. Again he watched the queer antics of that
little yarn ball, but now with different feelings.
The Redheaded Outfield |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: be the friend of any other thing after the destruction of evil; for the
effect cannot remain when the cause is destroyed.
True.
And have we not admitted already that the friend loves something for a
reason? and at the time of making the admission we were of opinion that the
neither good nor evil loves the good because of the evil?
Very true.
But now our view is changed, and we conceive that there must be some other
cause of friendship?
I suppose so.
May not the truth be rather, as we were saying just now, that desire is the
Lysis |
