| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: to the last crumb. There was even a cooky contest among the
children, and one thin, slablike Bohemian boy consumed sixteen and
won the prize, a gingerbread pig which Johanna Vavrika had
carefully decorated with red candies and burnt sugar. Fritz
Sweiheart, the German carpenter, won in the pickle contest, but he
disappeared soon after supper and was not seen for the rest of the
evening. Joe Vavrika said that Fritz could have managed the
pickles all right, but he had sampled the demijohn in his buggy too
often before sitting down to the table.
While the supper was being cleared away the two fiddlers began
to tune up for the dance. Clara was to accompany them on her old
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln: dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war. . .testing whether
that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated. . .
can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place
for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . .
we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead,
who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power
to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Whirligigs by O. Henry: it with the axes they carried. Into the other room sprang
Claude Turpin, with the captain at his heels.
The scene was one that lingered long in Turpin's
mind. Nearly a score of women -- women expensively
and fashionably clothed, many beautiful and of refined
appearance -- had been seated at little marble-topped
tables. When the police burst open the door they
shrieked and ran here and there like gayly plumed birds
that had been disturbed in a tropical grove. Some
became hysterical; one or two fainted; several knelt at
the feet of the officers and besought them for mercy on
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