| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Polly of the Circus by Margaret Mayo: feeling in his voice.
"Awful quiet, ain't it?" she ventured, after a pause. "Guess
that's what woke me up."
Douglas laughed good-naturedly at the thought of quiet as a
disturber, and added that he feared it might at first be rather
dull for her, but that Jim and Toby would send her news of the
circus, and that she could write to them as soon as she was
better.
"I'll have to be a heap better 'an I ever was 'fore I can write
much," Polly drawled, with a whimsical little smile.
"I will write for you," the pastor volunteered, understanding her
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: seldom closed my eyes without being haunted by Mr. Venables' image,
who seemed to assume terrific or hateful forms to torment me,
wherever I turned.--Sometimes a wild cat, a roaring bull, or hideous
assassin, whom I vainly attempted to fly; at others he was a demon,
hurrying me to the brink of a precipice, plunging me into dark
waves, or horrid gulfs; and I woke, in violent fits of trembling
anxiety, to assure myself that it was all a dream, and to endeavour
to lure my waking thoughts to wander to the delightful Italian
vales, I hoped soon to visit; or to picture some august ruins,
where I reclined in fancy on a mouldering column, and escaped, in
the contemplation of the heart-enlarging virtues of antiquity, from
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: she felt an eye -- a human eye -- upon the ignominious brand,
that seemed to give a momentary relief, as if half of her agony
were shared. The next instant, back it all rushed again, with
still a deeper throb of pain; for, in that brief interval, she
had sinned anew. (Had Hester sinned alone?)
Her imagination was somewhat affected, and, had she been of a
softer moral and intellectual fibre would have been still more
so, by the strange and solitary anguish of her life. Walking to
and fro, with those lonely footsteps, in the little world with
which she was outwardly connected, it now and then appeared to
The Scarlet Letter |
