| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Camille by Alexandre Dumas: is taken?" asked Prudence. "Yes; he agreed at once."
I did not know the duke, but I felt ashamed of deceiving him.
"But that is not all," continued Marguerite.
"What else is there?"
"I have been seeing about a place for Armand to stay."
"In the same house?" asked Prudence, laughing.
"No, at Point du Jour, where we had dinner, the duke and I. While
he was admiring the view, I asked Mme. Arnould (she is called
Mme. Arnould, isn't she?) if there were any suitable rooms, and
she showed me just the very thing: salon, anteroom, and bed-room,
at sixty francs a month; the whole place furnished in a way to
 Camille |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Heart of the West by O. Henry: "Aw, come off," said the boy, squinting his small eyes. "I ain't no
kid. There ain't any Santa Claus. It's your folks that buys toys and
sneaks 'em in when you're asleep. And they make marks in the soot in
the chimney with the tongs to look like Santa's sleigh tracks."
"That might be so," argued Trinidad, "but Christmas trees ain't no
fairy tale. This one's goin' to look like the ten-cent store in
Albuquerque, all strung up in a redwood. There's tops and drums and
Noah's arks and--"
"Oh, rats!" said Bobby, wearily. "I cut them out long ago. I'd like to
have a rifle--not a target one--a real one, to shoot wildcats with;
but I guess you won't have any of them on your old tree."
 Heart of the West |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: him so hard. But there was a lump in his throat which would not
go down. Ever since nightfall he had been tormented by the
thought of his mother, alone in that big house that had sent
forth so many men. Her unkindness now seemed so little, and her
loneliness so great. He remembered everything she had ever done
for him: how frightened she had been when he tore his hand in the
corn-sheller, and how she wouldn't let Olaf scold him. When Nils
went away he didn't leave his mother all alone, or he would never
have gone. Eric felt sure of that.
The train whistled. The conductor came in, smiling not unkindly.
"Well, young man, what are you going to do? We stop at Red Oak in
 The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |