| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane: She knew she was gradually and surely shrivelling in the hot,
stuffy room. The begrimed windows rattled incessantly from the
passing of elevated trains. The place was filled with a whirl of
noises and odors.
She wondered as she regarded some of the grizzled women in the
room, mere mechanical contrivances sewing seams and grinding out,
with heads bended over their work, tales of imagined or real
girlhood happiness, past drunks, the baby at home, and unpaid wages.
She speculated how long her youth would endure. She began to see
the bloom upon her cheeks as valuable.
She imagined herself, in an exasperating future, as a scrawny
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: foot coming up stairs, he shut up his books, and thrust aside his
instruments, in order to expostulate with him upon the protraction of the
cure, which, he told him, might surely have been accomplished at least by
that time:--He dwelt long upon the miseries he had undergone, and the
sorrows of his four years melancholy imprisonment;--adding, that had it not
been for the kind looks and fraternal chearings of the best of brothers,--
he had long since sunk under his misfortunes.--My father was by. My uncle
Toby's eloquence brought tears into his eyes;--'twas unexpected:--My uncle
Toby, by nature was not eloquent;--it had the greater effect:--The surgeon
was confounded;--not that there wanted grounds for such, or greater marks
of impatience,--but 'twas unexpected too; in the four years he had attended
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Flower Fables by Louisa May Alcott: waving a golden flower, whose silvery music filled the air. "Dear
Thistle," said the shining Spirit, "what you toiled so faithfully
to win for another, let us offer now as a token of our love for you."
As she ceased, down through the air came floating bands of lovely
Air Spirits, bringing a shining robe, and they too told their love
for the gentle Fairy who had dwelt with them.
Then softly on the breeze came distant music, growing ever nearer,
till over the rippling waves came the singing Water Spirits, in their
boats of many-colored shells; and as they placed their glittering
crown on Thistle's head, loud rang the flowers, and joyously sang
the birds, while all the Forest Fairies cried, with silvery voices,
Flower Fables |
