| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Polly of the Circus by Margaret Mayo: comparison with the children about her. She wore a plain, simple
gown of white, which Mandy had helped her to make. It had been
cut ankle- length, for Polly was now seventeen. Her quaint,
old-fashioned manner, her serious eyes, and her trick of knotting
her heavy, brown hair low on her neck, made her seem older.
Mandy waited until the children had disappeared over the hill,
then began bustling about looking for the step-ladder which Hasty
had left under the vines of the porch. It had been a busy day at
the parsonage. A social always meant perturbation for Mandy.
She called sharply to Hasty, as he came down the path which made
a short cut to the village:
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Gentle Grafter by O. Henry: will lose it all."
There was a smart kind of kid in the gang--I guess he was a newsboy.
"I got in twenty-fi', mister," he says, looking hopeful at Buck's silk
hat and clothes. "Dey paid me two-fifty a mont' on it. Say, a man
tells me dey can't do dat and be on de square. Is dat straight? Do you
guess I can get out my twenty-fi'?"
Some of the old women was crying. The factory girls was plumb
distracted. They'd lost all their savings and they'd be docked for the
time they lost coming to see about it.
There was one girl--a pretty one--in a red shawl, crying in a corner
like her heart would dissolve. Buck goes over and asks her about it.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Foolish Virgin by Thomas Dixon: can't go back on a fellow that's down and out. Give me
a chance! You will--won't you?"
The hot fingers gripped the Doctor's hand with
pleading tenderness.
The brown eyes searched Jim's soul.
"If you can show me it's worth while----"
The fingers tightened their grip in silence.
"Just give me a chance, Doc," he said at last, "and
I'll show you! I ain't never had a chance to really
know what was right and what was wrong. If I'd a lived
here with my old mother she'd have told me. You know
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