| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Copy-Cat & Other Stories by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: like dancers courtesying low on the stage of summer,
and shafts of green-white Yucca lilies and Japan
lilies and clove-pinks still remained in their school
of bloom.
Benny often stood still, wiped his forehead, leaned
on his rake, and inhaled the bouquet of sweet scents,
but Annie raked with never-ceasing energy. Annie
was small and slender and wiry, and moved with
angular grace, her thin, peaked elbows showing be-
neath the sleeves of her pink gingham dress, her thin
knees outlining beneath the scanty folds of the skirt.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: that I need have no remorse about the Spaniard's fifteen thousand
francs? Are they not really and truly mine?'
" 'Certainly.--But have you never tried to question Rosalie?' said I.
" 'Oh, to be sure I have, sir. But what is to be done? That girl is
like a wall. She knows something, but it is impossible to make her
talk.'
"After chatting with me for a few minutes, my hostess left me a prey
to vague and sinister thoughts, to romantic curiosity, and a religious
dread, not unlike the deep emotion which comes upon us when we go into
a dark church at night and discern a feeble light glimmering under a
lofty vault--a dim figure glides across--the sweep of a gown or of a
La Grande Breteche |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: he is struck. You may set it down as a truth which admits of few
exceptions, that those who ask your OPINION really want your
PRAISE, and will be contented with nothing less.
There is another kind of application to which editors, or those
supposed to have access to them, are liable, and which often proves
trying and painful. One is appealed to in behalf of some person in
needy circumstances who wishes to make a living by the pen. A
manuscript accompanying the letter is offered for publication. It
is not commonly brilliant, too often lamentably deficient. If
Rachel's saying is true, that "fortune is the measure of
intelligence," then poverty is evidence of limited capacity which
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
