| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: wringing his hands with earnestness. "You must have seen my
daughter, for she makes a grand figure in the world, and
everybody goes to see her. Did she send any word to her old
father, or say when she was coming back?"
Ethan Brand's eye quailed beneath the old man's. That daughter,
from whom he so earnestly desired a word of greeting, was the
Esther of our tale, the very girl whom, with such cold and
remorseless purpose, Ethan Brand had made the subject of a
psychological experiment, and wasted, absorbed, and perhaps
annihilated her soul, in the process.
"Yes," he murmured, turning away from the hoary wanderer, "it is
The Snow Image |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: that line which the frequent expression of excessive feeling scores so
deeply; her eyes filled with tears, but she wiped them quickly as she
looked at Balthazar.
It was impossible not to be deeply impressed by this head of the
family of Claes. When young, he must have resembled the noble family
martyr who had threatened to be another Artevelde to Charles V.; but
as he stood there at this moment, he seemed over sixty years of age,
though he was only fifty; and this premature old age had destroyed the
honorable likeness. His tall figure was slightly bent,--either because
his labors, whatever they were, obliged him to stoop, or that the
spinal column was curved by the weight of his head. He had a broad
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: when I heard low voices. Ahead of me, in a plum thicket beside
the road, I saw two boys bending over a dead dog. The little one,
not more than four or five, was on his knees, his hands folded,
and his close-clipped, bare head drooping forward in deep dejection.
The other stood beside him, a hand on his shoulder, and was
comforting him in a language I had not heard for a long while.
When I stopped my horses opposite them, the older boy took his
brother by the hand and came toward me. He, too, looked grave.
This was evidently a sad afternoon for them.
`Are you Mrs. Cuzak's boys?' I asked.
The younger one did not look up; he was submerged in his own feelings,
My Antonia |
