| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: written quite illegibly, she would go to my father's study and
ask him what it meant. But this was very rare, because my mother
did not like to disturb him.
When it happened, my father used to take the manuscript in
his hand, and ask with some annoyance, "What on earth is the
difficulty?" and would begin to read it out aloud. When he came
to the difficult place he would mumble and hesitate, and
sometimes had the greatest difficulty in making out, or, rather,
in guessing, what he had written. He had a very bad handwriting,
and a terrible habit of writing in whole sentences between the
lines, or in the corners of the page, or sometimes right across
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: felicity more than sufficiently equivalent to all the misery which
I had suffered, or could suffer.
In this frame of thankfulness I went home to my castle, and began
to be much easier now, as to the safety of my circumstances, than
ever I was before: for I observed that these wretches never came to
this island in search of what they could get; perhaps not seeking,
not wanting, or not expecting anything here; and having often, no
doubt, been up the covered, woody part of it without finding
anything to their purpose. I knew I had been here now almost
eighteen years, and never saw the least footsteps of human creature
there before; and I might be eighteen years more as entirely
Robinson Crusoe |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Voice of the City by O. Henry: hours' sleep for me, and then the west-bound."
The two dined in a Broadway restaurant. Kernan
was pleased with himself. He spent money like a
prince of fiction. And then a weird and gorgeous
musical comedy engaged their attention. Afterward
there was a late supper in a grillroom, with
champagne, and Kernan at the height of his com-
placency.
Half-past three in the morning found them in a
corner of an all-night cafe, Kernan still boasting in
a vapid and rambling way, Woods thinking moodily
The Voice of the City |
