| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: It was a terrible pause; and terrible to every ear were the
corroborating sounds of opening doors and passing footsteps.
Julia was the first to move and speak again. Jealousy and
bitterness had been suspended: selfishness was lost
in the common cause; but at the moment of her appearance,
Frederick was listening with looks of devotion to
Agatha's narrative, and pressing her hand to his heart;
and as soon as she could notice this, and see that,
in spite of the shock of her words, he still kept his
station and retained her sister's hand, her wounded
heart swelled again with injury, and looking as red
Mansfield Park |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Ruling Passion by Henry van Dyke: lamp; he in the corner by the stove, with the brown violin tucked
under his chin, wandering on from one air to another, and perfectly
content if she looked up now and then from her work and told him
that she liked the tune.
Serena was a pretty girl, with smooth, silky hair, end eyes of the
colour of the nodding harebells that blossom on the edge of the
woods. She was slight and delicate. The neighbours called her
sickly; and a great doctor from Philadelphia who had spent a summer
at Bytown had put his ear to her chest, and looked grave, and said
that she ought to winter in a mild climate. That was before people
had discovered the Adirondacks as a sanitarium for consumptives.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain: even to the noble himself -- unless the fact itself be an
offense: for the statement simply formulates a fact.
The repulsive feature of slavery is the THING, not its
name. One needs but to hear an aristocrat speak of
the classes that are below him to recognize -- and in
but indifferently modified measure -- the very air and
tone of the actual slaveholder; and behind these are
the slaveholder's spirit, the slaveholder's blunted feel-
ing. They are the result of the same cause in both
cases: the possessor's old and inbred custom of re-
garding himself as a superior being. The king's judg-
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court |
