| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett: Mrs. Fosdick leaned back in her rocking-chair and gave a heavy
sigh.
"I didn't move at first, but I'd held out just as long as I
could," said Mrs. Todd, whose voice trembled a little. "When
Joanna returned from the door, an' I could see that man's stupid
back departin' among the wild rose bushes, I just ran to her an'
caught her in my arms. I wasn't so big as I be now, and she was
older than me, but I hugged her tight, just as if she was a child.
'Oh, Joanna dear,' I says, 'won't you come ashore an' live 'long o'
me at the Landin', or go over to Green Island to mother's when
winter comes? Nobody shall trouble you an' mother finds it hard
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: Hardly able to stand, I crept back to my room. The door into
Gertrude's room was no longer locked: she was sleeping like a
tired child. And in my dressing-room Liddy hugged a cold hot-
water bottle, and mumbled in her sleep.
"There's some things you can't hold with hand cuffs, she was
muttering thickly.
CHAPTER XXIX
A SCRAP OF PAPER
For the first time in twenty years, I kept my bed that day.
Liddy was alarmed to the point of hysteria, and sent for Doctor
Stewart just after breakfast. Gertrude spent the morning with
The Circular Staircase |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: for it, for I discovered new mountains in the horizon which I had
never seen before--so much more of the earth and the heavens. I
might have walked about the foot of the tree for threescore years
and ten, and yet I certainly should never have seen them. But,
above all, I discovered around me--it was near the end of
June--on the ends of the topmost branches only, a few minute and
delicate red conelike blossoms, the fertile flower of the white
pine looking heavenward. I carried straightway to the village the
topmost spire, and showed it to stranger jurymen who walked the
streets--for it was court week--and to farmers and lumber-dealers
and woodchoppers and hunters, and not one had ever seen the like
Walking |
