| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: `The prayers of all good people are good,' he said quietly.
XIII
THE WEEK FOLLOWING Christmas brought in a thaw, and by New Year's Day
all the world about us was a broth of grey slush, and the guttered
slope between the windmill and the barn was running black water.
The soft black earth stood out in patches along the roadsides.
I resumed all my chores, carried in the cobs and wood and water,
and spent the afternoons at the barn, watching Jake shell corn
with a hand-sheller.
One morning, during this interval of fine weather, Antonia and her
mother rode over on one of their shaggy old horses to pay us a visit.
My Antonia |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: not wholesome. Why does he object to see a woman eating? What queer
notion is that! But he is mad. All you tell us about him is
impossible. A man cannot leave his home without a word, and never come
back for ten days. And then he tells you he has been to Dieppe to
paint the sea. As if any one painted the sea! He crams you with a pack
of tales that are too absurd."
Augustine opened her lips to defend her husband; but Madame Guillaume
enjoined silence with a wave of her hand, which she obeyed by a
survival of habit, and her mother went on in harsh tones: "Don't talk
to me about the man! He never set foot in church excepting to see you
and to be married. People without religion are capable of anything.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: isolated, because we were unwilling to be guilty of the base and unholy act
of giving up Hellenes to barbarians. And we were in the same case as when
we were subdued before; but, by the favour of Heaven, we managed better,
for we ended the war without the loss of our ships or walls or colonies;
the enemy was only too glad to be quit of us. Yet in this war we lost many
brave men, such as were those who fell owing to the ruggedness of the
ground at the battle of Corinth, or by treason at Lechaeum. Brave men,
too, were those who delivered the Persian king, and drove the
Lacedaemonians from the sea. I remind you of them, and you must celebrate
them together with me, and do honour to their memories.
Such were the actions of the men who are here interred, and of others who
|
