| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from When a Man Marries by Mary Roberts Rinehart: salad, and had evidently had a little supper. Supper and a nap,
while I worried myself gray-headed about her!
"She--she came in unexpectedly--something about the butler," I
explained under my breath. "And--she doesn't want to stay. She is
on bad terms with--with some of the people upstairs. You can see
how impossible the situation is."
"I doubt if we can get her out," he said, as if the situation
were quite ordinary. "However, we can try. She seems very
comfortable. It's a pity to rouse her."
Here the prisoner in the furnace room broke out afresh. It
sounded as though he had taken a lump of coal and was attacking
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: gazing at the stars; confounded as he was, here he stood.
Yes; there he stood. There seems to be no doubt about that.
Nearly half of this delirious story has now been delivered to the reader.
It seems a pity to reduce the other half to a cold synopsis.
Pity! it is more than a pity, it is a crime; for to synopsize McClintock
is to reduce a sky-flushing conflagration to dull embers, it is to
reduce barbaric splendor to ragged poverty. McClintock never wrote
a line that was not precious; he never wrote one that could be spared;
he never framed one from which a word could be removed without damage.
Every sentence that this master has produced may be likened to a
perfect set of teeth, white, uniform, beautiful. If you pull one,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain: vivacity:
"Why, Mary Austin! you bad girl, why didn't you
come to Sunday-school?"
"I did come -- didn't you see me?"
"Why, no! Did you? Where did you sit?"
"I was in Miss Peters' class, where I always go.
I saw YOU."
"Did you? Why, it's funny I didn't see you. I
wanted to tell you about the picnic."
"Oh, that's jolly. Who's going to give it?"
"My ma's going to let me have one."
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer |
