| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Copy-Cat & Other Stories by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: admiration in the eyes of little boys rather than
little girls, although very innocently. She always
glanced slyly at Johnny Trumbull when she wore a
pretty new frock, to see if he noticed. He never did,
and she was sharp enough to know it. She was also
child enough not to care a bit, but to take a queer
pleasure in the sensation of scorn which she felt in
consequence. She would eye Johnny from head to
foot, his boy's clothing somewhat spotted, his bulging
pockets, his always dusty shoes, and when he twisted
uneasily, not understanding why, she had a thrill
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) by Dante Alighieri: Or, as where dwells the greedy German boor,
The beaver settles watching for his prey;
So on the rim, that fenc'd the sand with rock,
Sat perch'd the fiend of evil. In the void
Glancing, his tail upturn'd its venomous fork,
With sting like scorpion's arm'd. Then thus my guide:
"Now need our way must turn few steps apart,
Far as to that ill beast, who couches there."
Thereat toward the right our downward course
We shap'd, and, better to escape the flame
And burning marle, ten paces on the verge
The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: Wonder askance. What ails the boss? they ask.
Him, richest of the rich, an endless task
Before the earliest birds or servants stir
Calls and detains him daylong prisoner?
He whose innumerable dollars hewed
This cleft in the boar and devil-haunted wood,
And bade therein, from sun to seas and skies,
His many-windowed, painted palace rise
Red-roofed, blue-walled, a rainbow on the hill,
A wonder in the forest glade: he still,
Unthinkable Aladdin, dawn and dark,
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