| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: was among them a slave girl out of the far East, who had a pinched
wasp-waist, such as you may see on the old Hindoo sculptures, and
such as you may see in any street in a British town. And when the
Greek ladies of the neighbourhood found her out, they sent for her
from house to house, to behold, with astonishment and laughter,
this new and prodigious, waist, with which it seemed to them it
was impossible for a human being to breathe or live; and they
petted the poor girl, and fed her, as they might a dwarf or a
giantess, till she got quite fat and comfortable, while her owners
had not enough to eat. So strange and ridiculous seemed our
present fashion to the descendants of those who, centuries before,
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Main Street by Sinclair Lewis: Mr. Raymond P. Wutherspoon, known as "Raymie," professional
bachelor, manager and one half the sales-force in the
shoe-department of the Bon Ton Store.
"You will enjoy Gopher Prairie very much, Mrs. Kennicott,"
petitioned Raymie. His eyes were like those of a dog waiting
to be let in out of the cold. He passed the stewed apricots
effusively. "There are a great many bright cultured people
here. Mrs. Wilks, the Christian Science reader, is a very
bright woman--though I am not a Scientist myself, in fact I
sing in the Episcopal choir. And Miss Sherwin of the high
school--she is such a pleasing, bright girl--I was fitting her
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: and never failed to express the hope that I wrote regularly to my
"honoured uncle." I made no secret of the way I employed my
time, and I rather fancy that my artless tales of the pilots and
so on entertained Madame Delestang so far as that ineffable woman
could be entertained by the prattle of a youngster very full of
his new experience among strange men and strange sensations. She
expressed no opinions, and talked to me very little; yet her
portrait hangs in the gallery of my intimate memories, fixed
there by a short and fleeting episode. One day, after putting me
down at the corner of a street, she offered me her hand, and
detained me, by a slight pressure, for a moment. While the
A Personal Record |
