| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: were long and heavy. Her eyes slanted a little, as if she had a
strain of Tartar or gypsy blood, and were sometimes full of fiery
determination and sometimes dull and opaque. Her expression was
never altogether amiable; was often, indeed, distinctly sullen, or,
when she was animated, sarcastic. She was most attractive in
profile, for then one saw to advantage her small, well-shaped head
and delicate ears, and felt at once that here was a very positive,
if not an altogether pleasing, personality.
The entire management of Mrs. Olaf's household devolved upon
her aunt, Johanna Vavrika, a superstitious, doting woman of fifty.
When Clara was a little girl her mother died, and Johanna's life
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lin McLean by Owen Wister: Buffalo. It was circus week in Buffalo. Had I ever considered the money
there must be in the circus business? Tommy had taken the outgoing
letters early yesterday. Nobody had kept him waiting. By all rules he
should have been back again last night. Maybe the stage was late reaching
Powder River, and Tommy had had to lay over for it. Well, that would
justify him. Far more likely he had gone to the circus himself and taken
the mail with him. Tommy was no type of man for postmaster. Except
drawing the allowance his mother in the East gave him first of every
month, he had never shown punctuality that Lin could remember. Never had
any second thoughts, and awful few first ones. Told bigger lies than a
small man ought, also.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: done anything else; and yet I remember saying to myself that it was
hard, was even cruel. Not only had I lost the books, but I had
lost the man himself: they and their author had been alike spoiled
for me. I knew too which was the loss I most regretted. I had
taken to the man still more than I had ever taken to the books.
CHAPTER VI.
SIX months after our friend had left England George Corvick, who
made his living by his pen, contracted for a piece of work which
imposed on him an absence of some length and a journey of some
difficulty, and his undertaking of which was much of a surprise to
me. His brother-in-law had become editor of a great provincial
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