| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Market-Place by Harold Frederic: an uneasy glance toward his companion. Apparently his
tongue was at a loss for an appropriate comment.
Thorpe had lost none of these unwilling tokens of embarrassment.
Plowden saw that at once, but it relieved even more than
it surprised him to see also that Thorpe appeared not
to mind. The older man, indeed, smiled in good-natured
if somewhat ironical comprehension of the dumb-show.
"Oh, that'll be all right, too," he said, with the evident
intention of reassurance. "I can do it right enough,
so far as the big things are concerned. It'll be in the
little things that I'll want some steering."
The Market-Place |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: come with fishing-reels and slender lunch, and let down their fine
lines through the snowy field to take pickerel and perch; wild men,
who instinctively follow other fashions and trust other authorities
than their townsmen, and by their goings and comings stitch towns
together in parts where else they would be ripped. They sit and eat
their luncheon in stout fear-naughts on the dry oak leaves on the
shore, as wise in natural lore as the citizen is in artificial.
They never consulted with books, and know and can tell much less
than they have done. The things which they practice are said not
yet to be known. Here is one fishing for pickerel with grown perch
for bait. You look into his pail with wonder as into a summer pond,
Walden |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Options by O. Henry: even the observation tower showing.
"Major Bing's idea was this. He had the population go forth into the
forest and gather these products. When they brought 'em in he gave
'em one-fifth for their trouble. Sometimes they'd strike and demand a
sixth. The Major always gave in to 'em.
"The Major had a bungalow so close on the sea that the nine-inch tide
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.
Options |
