| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell: rapid steps paused, fright weakening her knees. How silent the
house was! How dreadfully still! Had they all gone off and left
her? Hadn't anyone waited for her? She hadn't meant for them to
leave her here alone. These days anything could happen to a lone
woman and with the Yankees coming--
She jumped as a slight noise sounded and, turning quickly, saw
crouched by the banisters her forgotten son, his eyes enormous with
terror. He tried to speak but his throat only worked silently.
"Get up, Wade Hampton," she commanded swiftly. "Get up and walk.
Mother can't carry you now."
He ran to her, like a small frightened animal, and clutching her
Gone With the Wind |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Virginian by Owen Wister: to-morrow."
He kept his silence.
"You may have three guesses," said a man behind me.
But I did not need them. And in the recoil of my insight the
clump of cottonwoods came into my mind, black and grim. No other
trees high enough grew within ten miles. This, then, was the
business that the Virginian's letter had so curtly mentioned. My
eyes went into all corners of the stable, but no other prisoners
were here I half expected to see Trampas, and I half feared to
see Shorty; for poor stupid Shorty's honesty had not been proof
against frontier temptations, and he had fallen away from the
The Virginian |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen: and all our agreeableness belongs solely to each other
for that time. Nobody can fasten themselves on the notice
of one, without injuring the rights of the other.
I consider a country-dance as an emblem of marriage.
Fidelity and complaisance are the principal duties of both;
and those men who do not choose to dance or marry themselves,
have no business with the partners or wives of their neighbours."
"But they are such very different things!"
"--That you think they cannot be compared together."
"To be sure not. People that marry can never part,
but must go and keep house together. People that dance
Northanger Abbey |
