| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Light of Western Stars by Zane Grey: Montes directed Madeline's attention to a man by the window. A
loose scarf of vivid red hung from his hand.
"Senora, they were waiting for the sun to set when we arrived,"
said Montes. "The signal was about to be given for Senor
Stewart's walk to death."
"Stewart's walk!" echoed Madeline.
"Ah, Senora, let me tell you his sentence--the sentence I have
had the honor and happiness to revoke for you."
Stewart had been court-martialed and sentenced according to a
Mexican custom observed in cases of brave soldiers to whom
honorable and fitting executions were due. His hour had been set
The Light of Western Stars |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn: are all different from our. Yet by a magic of which Mr. Hearn, almost alone
among contemporary writers, is the master, in these delicate, transparent,
ghostly sketches of a world unreal to us, there is a haunting sense of
spiritual reality.
In a penetrating and beautiful essay contributed to the "Atlantic Monthly"
in February, 1903, by Paul Elmer More, the secret of Mr. Hearn's magic is
said to lie in the fact that in his art is found "the meeting of three
ways." "To the religious instinct of India -- Buddhism in particular,--
which history has engrafted on the aesthetic sense of Japan, Mr. Hearn
brings the interpreting spirit of occidental science; and these three
traditions are fused by the peculiar sympathies of his mind into one rich
Kwaidan |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: was talon-like, it was so bony and long-fingered. The widow
began her introduction of me. The man's eyes opened slowly,
and glittered wickedly out from the twilight of their caverns;
he frowned a black frown; he lifted his lean hand and waved us
peremptorily away. But the widow kept straight on, till she
had got out the fact that I was a stranger and an American.
The man's face changed at once; brightened, became even eager--
and the next moment he and I were alone together.
I opened up in cast-iron German; he responded in quite flexible English;
thereafter we gave the German language a permanent rest.
This consumptive and I became good friends. I visited him every day, and we
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