| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: under the hammer; of four nationalities; all sound in the wind
and limb and pedigree, all bankrupt and in debt up to the ears.
They come high, but we can afford it. Come, Aleck, don't delay
any longer, don't keep up the suspense: take the whole lay-out,
and leave the girls to choose!"
Aleck had been smiling blandly and contentedly all through this
arraignment of her marriage policy, a pleasant light, as of triumph
with perhaps a nice surprise peeping out through it, rose in her eyes,
and she said, as calmly as she could:
"Sally, what would you say to--ROYALTY?"
Prodigious! Poor man, it knocked him silly, and he fell over the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Confessio Amantis by John Gower: Of Theses and of his myht,
And syh he was a lusti kniht,
Hire hole herte on him sche leide,
And he also of love hir preide,
So ferforth that thei were al on.
And sche ordeigneth thanne anon 5340
In what manere he scholde him save,
And schop so that sche dede him have
A clue of thred, of which withinne
Ferst ate dore he schal beginne
With him to take that on ende,
Confessio Amantis |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: about grey wolves and bears in the Rockies, wildcats and panthers
in the Virginia mountains. Sometimes Fuchs could be persuaded
to talk about the outlaws and desperate characters he had known.
I remember one funny story about himself that made grandmother,
who was working her bread on the bread-board, laugh until she
wiped her eyes with her bare arm, her hands being floury.
It was like this:
When Otto left Austria to come to America, he was asked
by one of his relatives to look after a woman who was
crossing on the same boat, to join her husband in Chicago.
The woman started off with two children, but it was clear
My Antonia |
