| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: "Eric, I didn't look for this from you. I thought God had set
his mark on you if he ever had on any man. And it is for things
like this that you set your soul back a thousand years from God. 0
foolish and perverse generation!"
Eric drew himself up to his full height and looked off to
where the new day was gilding the corn-tassels and flooding the
uplands with light. As his nostrils drew in the breath of the dew
and the morning, something from the only poetry he had ever read
flashed across his mind, and he murmured, half to himself, with
dreamy exultation:
"'And a day shall be as a thousand years, and a thousand years
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne: southeast and southwest, which would have made this coast a very long
peninsula. At the northern extremity of the bay the outline of the shore
was continued to a great distance in a wider curve. There the shore was
low, flat, without cliffs, and with great banks of sand, which the tide
left uncovered. Pencroft and Herbert then returned towards the west. Their
attention was first arrested by the snow-topped mountain which rose at a
distance of six or seven miles. From its first declivities to within two
miles of the coast were spread vast masses of wood, relieved by large green
patches, caused by the presence of evergreen trees. Then, from the edge of
this forest to the shore extended a plain, scattered irregularly with
groups of trees. Here and there on the left sparkled through glades the
The Mysterious Island |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy: As soon as he had walked in and perceived that Grace was not in
the room, he seemed to have a misgiving. Nothing less than her
actual presence could long keep him to the level of this
impassioned enterprise, and that lacking he appeared as one who
wished to retrace his steps.
He mechanically talked at what he considered a woodland matron's
level of thought till a rustling was heard on the stairs, and
Grace came in. Fitzpiers was for once as agitated as she. Over
and above the genuine emotion which she raised in his heart there
hung the sense that he was casting a die by impulse which he might
not have thrown by judgment.
The Woodlanders |
