| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Heart of the West by O. Henry: the station to take the train back to town. After dinner Raidler took
him aside, pushed a twenty-dollar bill against his hand, and said:
"Doc, there's a young chap in that room I guess has got a bad case of
consumption. I'd like for you to look him over and see just how bad he
is, and if we can do anything for him."
"How much was that dinner I just ate, Mr. Raidler?" said the doctor
bluffly, looking over his spectacles. Raidler returned the money to
his pocket. The doctor immediately entered McGuire's room, and the
cattleman seated himself upon a heap of saddles on the gallery, ready
to reproach himself in the event the verdict should be unfavourable.
In ten minutes the doctor came briskly out. "Your man," he said
Heart of the West |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Profits of Religion by Upton Sinclair: be an immutable position for the steering-wheel of an aeroplane.
The business of the pilot of an aeroplane is to keep his machine
aloft amid shifting currents of wind. The business of a moralist
is to adjust life to a constantly changing environment. An action
which was suicide yesterday becomes heroism today, and futility
or hypocrisy tomorrow.
This new morality, like all things in a world of strife, is
fighting for existence, using its own weapons, which are reason
and love. Obviously it can use no others, without
self-destruction; yet it has to meet enemies who fight with the
old weapons of force and fraud. Whether it will prevail is more
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: The Lottery Ticket
THE WIFE
I
I RECEIVED the following letter:
"DEAR SIR, PAVEL ANDREITCH!
"Not far from you -- that is to say, in the village of Pestrovo
-- very distressing incidents are taking place, concerning which
I feel it my duty to write to you. All the peasants of that
village sold their cottages and all their belongings, and set off
for the province of Tomsk, but did not succeed in getting there,
and have come back. Here, of course, they have nothing now;
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