| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: hear the impact of their great heads, and their bellowing
shook the pans on the kitchen shelves. Had they not
been dehorned, they would have torn each other to pieces.
Pretty soon the fat steers took it up and began butting and
horning each other. Clearly, the affair had to be stopped.
We all stood by and watched admiringly while Fuchs rode into
the corral with a pitchfork and prodded the bulls again and again,
finally driving them apart.
The big storm of the winter began on my eleventh birthday, the twentieth
of January. When I went down to breakfast that morning, Jake and Otto
came in white as snow-men, beating their hands and stamping their feet.
My Antonia |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Call of the Canyon by Zane Grey: it was.
My old job was not open to me, even if I had been able to work. The
government that I fought for left me to starve, or to die of my maladies
like a dog, for all it cared.
I could not live on your money, Carley. My people are poor, as you know. So
there was nothing for me to do but to borrow a little money from my friends
and to come West. I'm glad I had the courage to come. What this West is
I'll never try to tell you, because, loving the luxury and excitement and
glitter of the city as you do, you'd think I was crazy.
Getting on here, in my condition, was as hard as trench life. But now,
Carley--something has come to me out of the West. That, too, I am unable to
The Call of the Canyon |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Princess by Alfred Tennyson: Disrooted, what I am is grafted here.
Affianced, Sir? love-whispers may not breathe
Within this vestal limit, and how should I,
Who am not mine, say, live: the thunderbolt
Hangs silent; but prepare: I speak; it falls.'
'Yet pause,' I said: 'for that inscription there,
I think no more of deadly lurks therein,
Than in a clapper clapping in a garth,
To scare the fowl from fruit: if more there be,
If more and acted on, what follows? war;
Your own work marred: for this your Academe,
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