| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Virginian by Owen Wister: more deplorable than it did evidently to them. Their attention
merely wandered. Three hundred years ago they would have been
frightened; but not in this electric day. I saw Scipio stifling a
smile when it came to the doctrine of original sin. "We know of
its truth," said Dr. MacBride, "from the severe troubles and
distresses to which infants are liable, and from death passing
upon them before they are capable of sinning. Yet I knew he was a
good man; and I also knew that if a missionary is to be tactless,
he might almost as well be bad.
I said their attention wandered, but I forgot the Virginian. At
first his attitude might have been mere propriety. One can look
The Virginian |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: hunter sees in those of a poor, terrified doe--puzzled--questioning.
She trembled, and to steady herself raised her hands to his
broad shoulders. "What shall we do, Jean?" she whispered.
"It is terrible. Tomorrow all Paris will read of
it--he will see to that."
Her look, her attitude, her words were eloquent of the age-
old appeal of defenseless woman to her natural protector--man.
Tarzan took one of the warm little hands that lay on his
breast in his own strong one. The act was quite involuntary,
and almost equally so was the instinct of protection that
threw a sheltering arm around the girl's shoulders.
The Return of Tarzan |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: present, as he looked about him, in the small complacencies of the
room, the beaded velvet and the fluted moreen; and though, as we
know, he had the worship of the Dead, he found himself not
definitely regretting this lady. If she wasn't in his long list,
however, she was in her niece's short one, and Stransom presently
observed to the latter that now at least, in the place they haunted
together, she would have another object of devotion.
"Yes, I shall have another. She was very kind to me. It's that
that's the difference."
He judged, wondering a good deal before he made any motion to leave
her, that the difference would somehow be very great and would
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