| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from McTeague by Frank Norris: deserving of charity; the signature was illegible. The
dentist stared at the letter, returned it to the buck, and
regained the train just as it started. Neither had spoken;
the buck did not move from his position, and fully five
minutes afterward, when the slow-moving freight was
miles away, the dentist looked back and saw him still
standing motionless between the rails, a forlorn and
solitary point of red, lost in the immensity of the
surrounding white blur of the desert.
At length the mountains began again, rising up on either
side of the track; vast, naked hills of white sand and red
McTeague |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Vailima Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson: carts or carriages; at worst the rattle of a horse's shoes
among the rocks. Beautiful silence; and so soon as this
robustious rain takes off, I am to drink of it again by
oceanfuls.
APRIL 16TH.
Several pages of this letter destroyed as beneath scorn; the
wailings of a crushed worm; matter in which neither you nor I
can take stock. Fanny is distinctly better, I believe all
right now; I too am mending, though I have suffered from
crushed wormery, which is not good for the body, and
damnation to the soul. I feel to-night a baseless anxiety to
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Ursula by Honore de Balzac: notary instead, was surprised by Minoret's attention to such a degree
that she rose to receive him and signed to him to take a chair.
"Be seated, monsieur," she said with a regal air. "Our dear abbe has
told you that the viscount is in prison on account of some youthful
debts,--a hundred thousand francs or so. If you could lend them to him
I would secure you on my farm at Bordieres."
"We will talk of that, madame, when I have brought your son back to
you--if you will allow me to be your emissary in the matter."
"Very good, monsieur," she said, bowing her head and looking at the
abbe as if to say, "You were right; he really is a man of good
society."
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