| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Persuasion by Jane Austen: and a right to spend it as he liked.
As to the management of their children, his theory was much better
than his wife's, and his practice not so bad. "I could manage them
very well, if it were not for Mary's interference," was what
Anne often heard him say, and had a good deal of faith in;
but when listening in turn to Mary's reproach of "Charles spoils
the children so that I cannot get them into any order," she never had
the smallest temptation to say, "Very true."
One of the least agreeable circumstances of her residence there
was her being treated with too much confidence by all parties,
and being too much in the secret of the complaints of each house.
Persuasion |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Young Forester by Zane Grey: feel overjoyed at that, but I was too tired. Anyway I was sure the fire had
crossed below or above. It would be tearing down on this side presently,
and then I would have to crawl into the brook or burn up. It did not matter
much which I had to do. Then I grew dizzy, my legs trembled, my feet lost
all sense of touching the ground. I could not go much farther. Just then I
heard a shout. It was close by. I answered, and heard heavy steps. I peered
through the smoky haze. Something dark moved up in the gloom.
"Ho, kid! Thar you are!" I felt a strong arm go round my waist. "Wal, wal!"
That was Herky. His voice sounded glad. It roused a strange eagerness in
me; his rough greeting seemed to bring me back from a distance.
"All wet, but not burned none, I, see. We kinder was afeared. . . . Say,
The Young Forester |
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: express a certain condition, involving a hitherto undescribed
sensation (as it supposed,) all of which could have been
sufficiently explained by the participle - BORED. I have seen a
country-clergyman, with a one-story intellect and a one-horse
vocabulary, who has consumed his valuable time (and mine) freely,
in developing an opinion of a brother-minister's discourse which
would have been abundantly characterized by a peach-down-lipped
sophomore in the one word - SLOW. Let us discriminate, and be shy
of absolute proscription. I am omniverbivorous by nature and
training. Passing by such words as are poisonous, I can swallow
most others, and chew such as I cannot swallow.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
