| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Heart of the West by O. Henry: it, pleasant, for it wasn't up to her to take any canvas off the tent
by declining dollars just because they were whipped in after meal
times.
"It wasn't long until there was another fellow named Ed Collier got
the between-meals affliction, and him and me put in bridges between
breakfast and dinner, and dinner and supper, that made a three-ringed
circus of that tent, and Mame's turn as waiter a continuous
performance. That Collier man was saturated with designs and
contrivings. He was in well-boring or insurance or claim-jumping, or
something--I've forgotten which. He was a man well lubricated with
gentility, and his words were such as recommended you to his point of
Heart of the West |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Whirligigs by O. Henry: seemed to hear, whatever her surroundings were, the
scaly-barks falling and pattering down the mountain-
side. She could always hear the awful silence of Black-
jack sounding through the stillest of nights.
Goree watched this solemn equipage, as it drove to
his door, with only faint interest; but when the lank
driver wrapped the reins about his whip, awkwardly
descended, and stepped into the office, he rose unsteadily
to receive him, recognizing Pike Garvey, the new, the
transformed, the recently civilized.
The mountaineer took the chair Goree offered him.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: I need say nothing of his views on poetry or history, nor of his
judgment on the masterpieces of our language. There would be little
interest in the record of opinions now almost universally held, though
at that time, from the lips of a boy, they might seem remarkable.
Louis was capable of the highest flights. To give a notion of his
talents in a few words, he could have written /Zadig/ as wittily as
Voltaire; he could have thought out the dialogue between Sylla and
Eucrates as powerfully as Montesquieu. His rectitude of character made
him desire above all else in a work that it should bear the stamp of
utility; at the same time, his refined taste demanded novelty of
thought as well as of form. One of his most remarkable literary
Louis Lambert |
