| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis: showed it. She had turned back her calico sun-bonnet, and stood
looking up at Mrs. Howth and Joel, laughing as they talked with
her. The face would have startled you on so old and stunted a
body. It was a child's face, quick, eager, with that pitiful
beauty you always see in deformed people. Her eyes, I think,
were the kindliest, the hopefullest I ever saw. Nothing but the
livid thickness of her skin betrayed the fact that set Lois apart
from even the poorest poor,--the taint in her veins of black
blood.
"Whoy! be n't this Tiger?" said Joel, as the dog ran yelping
about him. "How comed yoh with him, Lois?"
Margret Howth: A Story of To-day |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: constructed of logs; the windows partly glazed, and partly
patched with leaves of old copybooks. It was most ingeniously
secured at vacant hours, by a *withe twisted in the handle of the
door, and stakes set against the window shutters; so that though
a thief might get in with perfect ease, he would find some
embarrassment in getting out, --an idea most probably borrowed by
the architect, Yost Van Houten, from the mystery of an eelpot.
The schoolhouse stood in a rather lonely but pleasant situation,
just at the foot of a woody hill, with a brook running close by,
and a formidable birch-tree growing at one end of it. From hence
the low murmur of his pupils' voices, conning over their lessons,
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from My Aunt Margaret's Mirror by Walter Scott: should enjoy after his death.
My conversation with Aunt Margaret generally relates little
either to the present or to the future. For the passing day we
possess as much as we require, and we neither of us wish for
more; and for that which is to follow, we have, on this side of
the grave, neither hopes, nor fears, nor anxiety. We therefore
naturally look back to the past, and forget the present fallen
fortunes and declined importance of our family in recalling the
hours when it was wealthy and prosperous.
With this slight introduction, the reader will know as much of
Aunt Margaret and her nephew as is necessary to comprehend the
|
