| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: as a gentleman, to remember the difference between grossness and
refinement, between excess and restraint--that one can have and keep just
as the pagan Greeks did, a moral elegance."
He astonished me, this ardent, ideal, troubled boy; so innocent regarding
the glaring facts of our new prosperity, so finely penetrating as to some
of the mysteries of the soul. But he was of old Huguenot blood, and of
careful and gentle upbringing; and it was delightful to find such a young
man left upon our American soil untainted by the present fashionable
idolatries.
"I bow to your creed of 'moral elegance,'" I cried. "It never dies. It
has outlasted all the mobs and all the religions."
"They seemed to think," he continued, pursuing his Newport train of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Burning Daylight by Jack London: reputation.
"Look here, Bunny," Daylight demanded, "which is right, I shall
be over to look that affair up on Monday, or I will be over to
look that affair up on Monday?"
The ex-football captain debated painfully for a minute. "Blessed
if I know," he confessed. "Which way do I say it?
"Oh, I will, of course."
"Then the other is right, depend upon it. I always was rotten on
grammar."
On the way back to the office, Daylight dropped into a bookstore
and bought a grammar; and for a solid hour, his feet up on the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Herland by Charlotte Gilman: She turned to me, with that high, sweet look of hers, and
then, as her eyes rested in mine and her hands too--then suddenly
there blazed out between us a farther glory, instant, overwhelming
--quite beyond any words of mine to tell.
Celis was a blue-and-gold-and-rose person; Alma, black-
and-white-and-red, a blazing beauty. Ellador was brown: hair
dark and soft, like a seal coat; clear brown skin with a healthy
red in it; brown eyes--all the way from topaz to black velvet they
seemed to range--splendid girls, all of them.
They had seen us first of all, far down in the lake below, and
flashed the tidings across the land even before our first exploring flight.
Herland |
