| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey: girl whom he had all but murdered. A thousand excuses he invented
for himself, yet not one made any difference in his act or his
self-reproach.
It seemed to him that when night fell black he could see her
white face so much more plainly.
"She'll go, presently," he said, "and be out of agony--thank
God!"
Every little while certainty of her death came to him with a
shock; and then he would bend over and lay his ear on her breast.
Her heart still beat.
The early night blackness cleared to the cold starlight. The
Riders of the Purple Sage |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: more before they covered the foot of its bole up with earth. This
is the American elm most like an oak of any I have ever seen.
The Sheffield elm is equally remarkable for size and perfection of
form. I have seen nothing that comes near it in Berkshire County,
and few to compare with it anywhere. I am not sure that I remember
any other first-class elms in New England, but there may be many.
- What makes a first-class elm? - Why, size, in the first place,
and chiefly. Anything over twenty feet of clear girth, five feet
above the ground, and with a spread of branches a hundred feet
across, may claim that title, according to my scale. All of them,
with the questionable exception of the Springfield tree above
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Human Drift by Jack London: stay was coated with ice, while all the rigging was a harp,
singing and shouting under the fierce hand of the wind. The
schooner, hove to, lurched and floundered through the sea, rolling
her scuppers under and perpetually flooding the deck with icy salt
water. We of the forecastle stood in sea-boots and oilskins. Our
hands were mittened, but our heads were bared in the presence of
the death we did not respect. Our ears stung and numbed and
whitened, and we yearned for the body to be gone. But the
interminable reading of the burial service went on. The captain
had mistaken his place, and while he read on without purpose we
froze our ears and resented this final hardship thrust upon us by
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