| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Europeans by Henry James: of yesterday," he said, "who was so wonderfully pretty--
what has become of her?"
"She is in the parlor," Gertrude answered. "Yes, she is very pretty."
She felt as if it were her duty to take him straight into the house,
to where he might be near her cousin. But after hesitating a moment she
lingered still. "I did n't believe you would come back," she said.
"Not come back!" cried Felix, laughing. "You did n't know, then,
the impression made upon this susceptible heart of mine."
She wondered whether he meant the impression her cousin Lizzie had made.
"Well," she said, "I did n't think we should ever see you again. "
"And pray what did you think would become of me?"
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: through the big open window while they ironed and talked in Danish.
The clouds of white dust that blew up the street, the gusts of hot
wind that withered his vegetable garden, never disturbed his calm.
His droll expression seemed to say that he had found the secret
of contentment. Morning and evening he drove about in his spring wagon,
distributing freshly ironed clothes, and collecting bags of linen that cried
out for his suds and sunny drying-lines. His girls never looked so pretty
at the dances as they did standing by the ironing-board, or over the tubs,
washing the fine pieces, their white arms and throats bare, their cheeks
bright as the brightest wild roses, their gold hair moist with the steam
or the heat and curling in little damp spirals about their ears.
My Antonia |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Secret Places of the Heart by H. G. Wells: and future. I stood with my feet upon the Stone Age and saw
myself four thousand years away, and all my distresses as
very little incidents in that perspective. Away there in
London the case is altogether different; after three hours or
so of the Committee one concentrates into one little inflamed
moment of personality. There is no past any longer, there is
no future, there is only the rankling dispute. For all those
three hours, perhaps, I have been thinking of just what I had
to say, just how I had to say it, just how I looked while I
said it, just how much I was making myself understood, how I
might be misunderstood, how I might be misrepresented,
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