| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: lessons are the most palatable, and make themselves welcome
to the mind. A writer learns this early, and it is his chief
support; he goes on unafraid, laying down the law; and he is
sure at heart that most of what he says is demonstrably
false, and much of a mingled strain, and some hurtful, and
very little good for service; but he is sure besides that
when his words fall into the hands of any genuine reader,
they will be weighed and winnowed, and only that which suits
will be assimilated; and when they fall into the hands of one
who cannot intelligently read, they come there quite silent
and inarticulate, falling upon deaf ears, and his secret is
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Old Indian Legends by Zitkala-Sa: just a head above it all. Suddenly exclaiming "Hunhe!" he dropped
out of sight. In another instant he held up in both his hands a
tiny little baby, wrapped in soft brown buckskins.
"Oh ho, a wood-child!" cried the men, for they were hunting
along the wooded river bottom where this babe was found.
While the hunters were questioning whether or no they should
carry it home, the wee Indian baby kept up his little howl.
"His voice is strong!" said one.
"At times it sounds like an old man's voice!" whispered a
superstitious fellow, who feared some bad spirit hid in the small
child to cheat them by and by.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Poems by Bronte Sisters: That stony-hearted grasp.
Thine eye bids love and joy depart:
Oh, turn its gaze from me!
It presses down my shrinking heart;
I will not walk with thee!
"Wisdom is mine," I've heard thee say:
"Beneath my searching eye
All mist and darkness melt away,
Phantoms and fables fly.
Before me truth can stand alone,
The naked, solid truth;
|
