| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Virginian by Owen Wister: "Dear me! I--"
"You can ride my hawss. He's gentle."
"What! And you walk?"
"No, ma'am. Nor the two of us ride him THIS time, either." At
this she turned entirely pink, and he, noticing, went on quietly:
"I'll catch up one of Taylor's hawsses. Taylor knows me."
"No. I don't really think I could do that. But thank you. Thank
you very much. I must go now and see how Mrs. Taylor's fire is."
"I'll look after that, ma'am. I'd like for yu' to go ridin'
mighty well. Yu' have no babies this mawnin' to be anxious
after."
The Virginian |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Aeneid by Virgil: Nor could his plated shield sustain the force.
Iolas fell, whom not the Grecian pow'rs,
Nor great subverter of the Trojan tow'rs,
Were doom'd to kill, while Heav'n prolong'd his date;
But who can pass the bounds, prefix'd by fate?
In high Lyrnessus, and in Troy, he held
Two palaces, and was from each expell'd:
Of all the mighty man, the last remains
A little spot of foreign earth contains.
And now both hosts their broken troops unite
In equal ranks, and mix in mortal fight.
Aeneid |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson: birds, of the pure and quiet air, of the slanting sunlight and the
mile-long shadows. To one who had passed a miserable night, the
freshness of that hour was tonic and reviving; to steal a march upon
his slumbering fellows, to be the Adam of the coming day, composed
and fortified his spirits; and the Prince, breathing deep and
pausing as he went, walked in the wet fields beside his shadow, and
was glad.
A trellised path led down into the valley of the brook, and he
turned to follow it. The stream was a break-neck, boiling Highland
river. Hard by the farm, it leaped a little precipice in a thick
grey-mare's tail of twisted filaments, and then lay and worked and
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