| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Father Sergius by Leo Tolstoy: nearly threw out of the window another cadet who had begun to
tease him about his collection of minerals. On another occasion
he came almost completely to grief by flinging a whole dish of
cutlets at an officer who was acting as steward, attacking him
and, it was said, striking him for having broken his word and
told a barefaced lie. He would certainly have been reduced to
the ranks had not the Director of the College hushed up the whole
matter and dismissed the steward.
By the time he was eighteen he had finished his College course
and received a commission as lieutenant in an aristocratic
regiment of the Guards.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Virginian by Owen Wister: "Then what do you want?" I asked. "What did you want?"
He could not answer me--but I had not answered him, I saw; so I
pushed it farther. "Did you want indorsement from the man you
were hanging? That's asking a little too much."
But he had now another confusion. "Steve stood by Shorty," he
said musingly. "It was Shorty's mistake cost him his life, but
all the same he didn't want us to catch--"
"You are mixing things," I interrupted. "I never heard you mix
things before. And it was not Shorty's mistake."
He showed momentary interest. "Whose then?"
"The mistake of whoever took a fool into their enterprise."
The Virginian |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Blix by Frank Norris: delightful sporting clerk's card. The old Yankee--his twang and
dry humor singularly incongruous on that royal morning--was
solicitude itself. He picked out the best boat on the beach for
them, loaned them his own anchor of railroad iron, indicated
minutely the point on the opposite shore off which the last big
trout had been "killed," and wetted himself to his ankles as he
pushed off the boat.
Condy took the oars. Blix sat in the stern, jointing the rods and
running the lines through the guides. She even baited the hooks
with the salt shrimp herself, and by nine o'clock they were at
|
