| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: My one concern was that grandmother should keep everyone away from me.
If the story once got abroad, I would never hear the last of it.
I could well imagine what the old men down at the drugstore would
do with such a theme.
While grandmother was trying to make me comfortable,
grandfather went to the depot and learned that Wick Cutter
had come home on the night express from the east, and had left
again on the six o'clock train for Denver that morning.
The agent said his face was striped with court-plaster, and
he carried his left hand in a sling. He looked so used up,
that the agent asked him what had happened to him since ten
My Antonia |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: *END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.07.02.92*END*
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THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW
by Washington Irving
Found among the papers of the late Diedrech Knickerbocker.
A pleasing land of drowsy head it was,
Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye;
And of gay castles in the clouds that pass,
Forever flushing round a summer sky.
Castle of Indolence.
In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: the pillage of the Abbaye de Chelles. Beside a ciborium, the gift of
royal munificence, the wine and water for the holy sacrifice of the
mass stood ready in two glasses such as could scarcely be found in the
meanest tavern. For want of a missal, the priest had laid his breviary
on the altar, and a common earthenware plate was set for the washing
of hands that were pure and undefiled with blood. It was all so
infinitely great, yet so little, poverty-stricken yet noble, a
mingling of sacred and profane.
The stranger came forward reverently to kneel between the two nuns.
But the priest had tied crape round the chalice of the crucifix,
having no other way of marking the mass as a funeral service; it was
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