| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: Where is that Leo!' She pulled them out of corners and came
bringing them like a mother cat bringing in her kittens.
`You don't have to go right off, Jim? My oldest boy's not here.
He's gone with papa to the street fair at Wilber. I won't let
you go! You've got to stay and see Rudolph and our papa.'
She looked at me imploringly, panting with excitement.
While I reassured her and told her there would be plenty of time,
the barefooted boys from outside were slipping into the kitchen
and gathering about her.
`Now, tell me their names, and how old they are.'
As she told them off in turn, she made several mistakes about ages,
My Antonia |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Professor by Charlotte Bronte: circumstances; circumstances had freed me. Life was again open
to me; no longer was its horizon limited by the high black wall
surrounding Crimsworth's mill. Two hours had elapsed before my
sensations had so far subsided as to leave me calm enough to
remark for what wider and clearer boundaries I had exchanged that
sooty girdle. When I did look up, lo! straight before me lay
Grovetown, a village of villas about five miles out of X----. The
short winter day, as I perceived from the far-declined sun, was
already approaching its close; a chill frost-mist was rising from
the river on which X---- stands, and along whose banks the road I
had taken lay; it dimmed the earth, but did not obscure the clear
The Professor |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: and the lady must surely be left destitute. 'The perilous,
hairbreadth ridi' was our word for it; and in the conflict that
rages over women's dress it has the misfortune to please neither
side, the prudish condemning it as insufficient, the more frivolous
finding it unlovely in itself. Yet if a pretty Gilbertine would
look her best, that must be her costume. In that and naked
otherwise, she moves with an incomparable liberty and grace and
life, that marks the poetry of Micronesia. Bundle her in a gown,
the charm is fled, and she wriggles like an Englishwoman.
Towards dusk the passers-by became more gorgeous. The men broke
out in all the colours of the rainbow - or at least of the trade-
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