| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mansion by Henry van Dyke: crowded
tenements of the great city, bringing cheer and comfort not only
by
his songs, but by his wise and patient works of practical aid--a
paralyzed
woman who had lain for thirty years upon her bed, helpless but
not hopeless, succeeding by a miracle of courage in her single
aim,
never to complain, but always to impart a bit of joy and peace to
every one who came near her. All these, and other persons like
them,
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, etc. by Oscar Wilde: their rough, good-humoured voices, and their nonchalant ways, what
a strange London they saw! A London free from the sin of night and
the smoke of day, a pallid, ghost-like city, a desolate town of
tombs! He wondered what they thought of it, and whether they knew
anything of its splendour and its shame, of its fierce, fiery-
coloured joys, and its horrible hunger, of all it makes and mars
from morn to eve. Probably it was to them merely a mart where they
brought their fruits to sell, and where they tarried for a few
hours at most, leaving the streets still silent, the houses still
asleep. It gave him pleasure to watch them as they went by. Rude
as they were, with their heavy, hob-nailed shoes, and their awkward
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: and obviate the irksomeness of too tame an ease,--a score of
such might be at Judge Pyncheon's service. Yes! in a score of
drawing-rooms he would be more than welcome. Mamma would advance
to meet him, with outstretched hand; the virgin daughter, elderly
as he has now got to be,--an old widower, as he smilingly describes
himself,--would shake up the cushion for the Judge, and do her
pretty utmost to make him comfortable. For the Judge is a
prosperous man. He cherishes his schemes, moreover, like other
people, and reasonably brighter than most others; or did so, at
least, as he lay abed this morning, in an agreeable half-drowse,
planning the business of the day, and speculating on the
House of Seven Gables |
