| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Heart of the West by O. Henry: time watching out the window for the man with the empty pocket-book
and the tickly moustache.
"I reckon Redruth waits about nine year expecting her to send him a
note by a nigger asking him to forgive her. But she don't. 'This game
won't work,' says Redruth; 'then so won't I.' And he goes in the
hermit business and raises whiskers. Yes; laziness and whiskers was
what done the trick. They travel together. You ever hear of a man with
long whiskers and hair striking a bonanza? No. Look at the Duke of
Marlborough and this Standard Oil snoozer. Have they got 'em?
"Now, this Alice didn't never marry, I'll bet a hoss. If Redruth had
married somebody else she might have done so, too. But he never turns
Heart of the West |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Pierre Grassou by Honore de Balzac: the last, "but I tell everybody forty thousand."
"Forty thousand for a Titian!" said the artist, aloud. "Why, it is
nothing at all!"
"Didn't I tell you," said Vervelle, "that I had three hundred thousand
francs' worth of pictures?"
"I painted those pictures," said Pierre Grassou in Vervelle's ear,
"and I sold them one by one to Elie Magus for less than ten thousand
francs the whole lot."
"Prove it to me," said the bottle-dealer, "and I double my daughter's
'dot,' for if it is so, you are Rubens, Rembrandt, Titian, Gerard
Douw!"
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Padre Ignacio by Owen Wister: guest set forth down the hills together to the shore. And, beneath the
spell and confidence of pleasant, slow riding and the loveliness of
everything, the young man talked freely of himself.
"And, seriously," said he, "if I missed nothing else at Santa Ysabel, I
should long for--how shall I say it?--for insecurity, for danger, and of
all kinds--not merely danger to the body. Within these walls, beneath
these sacred bells, you live too safe for a man like me."
"Too safe!" These echoed words upon the lips of the pale Padre were a
whisper too light, too deep, for Gaston's heedless ear.
"Why," the young man pursued in a spirit that was but half levity,
"though I yield often to temptation, at times I have resisted it, and
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