| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte: irritating him by her own asperities; and I have reason to believe
that she considerably strengthened his prejudice against me. She
would tell him that I shamefully neglected the children, and even
his wife did not attend to them as she ought; and that he must look
after them himself, or they would all go to ruin.
Thus urged, he would frequently give himself the trouble of
watching them from the windows during their play; at times, he
would follow them through the grounds, and too often came suddenly
upon them while they were dabbling in the forbidden well, talking
to the coachman in the stables, or revelling in the filth of the
farm-yard - and I, meanwhile, wearily standing, by, having
Agnes Grey |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Reef by Edith Wharton: "That I can well believe. I'm glad to hear," he added,
"that you put it all in the past tense."
She seemed to droop a little at the allusion; then she
lifted her chin with a jerk of defiance. "Yes. All is at
an end between us. We've just parted in tears--but not in
silence!"
"Just parted? Do you mean to say you've been there all this
time?"
"Ever since you used to come there to see Lady Ulrica? Does
it seem to you so awfully long ago?"
The unexpectedness of the thrust--as well as its doubtful
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery: Matthew was having a bad ten minutes of it. He had come into the
kitchen, in the twilight of a cold, gray December evening, and
had sat down in the woodbox corner to take off his heavy boots,
unconscious of the fact that Anne and a bevy of her schoolmates
were having a practice of "The Fairy Queen" in the sitting room.
Presently they came trooping through the hall and out into the
kitchen, laughing and chattering gaily. They did not see
Matthew, who shrank bashfully back into the shadows beyond the
woodbox with a boot in one hand and a bootjack in the other, and
he watched them shyly for the aforesaid ten minutes as they put on
caps and jackets and talked about the dialogue and the concert.
Anne of Green Gables |
