| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Options by O. Henry: seeped through the cracks in the kitchen floor. Me and him and High
Jack Snakefeeder sat on the porch and drank rum from noon till
midnight. He said he had piled up $300,000 in New Orleans banks, and
High and me could stay with him forever if we would. But High Jack
happened to think of the United States, and began to talk ethnology.
"'Ruins!' says Major Bing. 'The woods are full of 'em. I don't know
how far they date back, but they was here before I came.'
"High Jack asks what form of worship the citizens of that locality are
addicted to.
"'Why,' says the Major, rubbing his nose, 'I can't hardly say. I
imagine it's infidel or Aztec or Nonconformist or something like that.
Options |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: At the bottom of her heart was some obscure idea that alone
interested her, but she could not get clear sight of it. Thinking
once more of Alexey Alexandrovitch, she recalled the time of her
illness after her confinement, and the feeling which never left
her at that time. "Why didn't I die?" and the words and the
feeling of that time came back to her. And all at once she knew
what was in her soul. Yes, it was that idea which alone solved
all. "Yes, to die! ...And the shame and disgrace of Alexey
Alexandrovitch and of Seryozha, and my awful shame, it will all
be saved by death. To die! and he will feel remorse; will be
sorry; will love me; he will suffer on my account." With the
Anna Karenina |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: opera, his Ring, so to speak, The Magic Flute, has a libretto
which, though none the worse for seeming, like The Rhine Gold,
the merest Christmas tomfoolery to shallow spectators, is the
product of a talent immeasurably inferior to Mozart's own.
The libretto of Don Giovanni is coarse and trivial: its
transfiguration by Mozart's music may be a marvel; but nobody
will venture to contend that such transfigurations, however
seductive, can be as satisfactory as tone poetry or drama in
which the musician and the poet are at the same level. Here,
then, we have the simple secret of Wagner's preemminence as a
dramatic musician. He wrote the poems as well as composed the
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