The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Burning Daylight by Jack London: that I can almost understand Browning and those other high-flying
poet-fellows. Look at Hood Mountain there, just where the sun's
striking. It was down in that crease that we found the spring."
"And that was the night you didn't milk the cows till ten
o'clock," she laughed. "And if you keep me here much longer,
supper won't be any earlier than it was that night."
Both arose from the bench, and Daylight caught up the milk-pail
from the nail by the door. He paused a moment longer to look out
over the valley.
"It's sure grand," he said.
"It's sure grand," she echoed, laughing joyously at him and with
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: Evidently she had great natural aptitude for her work.
She knew, as she said, `what people looked well in.'
She never tired of poring over fashion-books. Sometimes in the evening
I would find her alone in her work-room, draping folds of satin
on a wire figure, with a quite blissful expression of countenance.
I couldn't help thinking that the years when Lena literally hadn't
enough clothes to cover herself might have something to do with her
untiring interest in dressing the human figure. Her clients said
that Lena `had style,' and overlooked her habitual inaccuracies.
She never, I discovered, finished anything by the time she had promised,
and she frequently spent more money on materials than her customer
 My Antonia |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederic: it was destroying the book business and debauching the
reading tastes of the community. Without the profits from
the light and ephemeral popular literature of the season,
the book-store proper could not keep up its stock of more
solid works, and indeed could not long keep open at all.
On the other hand, "Thurston's" dealt with nothing save
the demand of the moment, and offered only the books
which were the talk of the week. Thus, in plain words,
the book trade was going to the dogs, and it was the same
with pretty nearly every other trade.
Theron was indignant at this, and on his return home
 The Damnation of Theron Ware |