| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: all the Divide country, where the women are usually too plain and
too busy and too tired to depart from the ways of virtue. On such
occasions Lena, attired in a pink wrapper and silk stockings and
tiny pink slippers, would sing to him, accompanying herself on a
battered guitar. It gave him a delicious sense of freedom and
experience to be with a woman who, no matter how, had lived in big
cities and knew the ways of town folk, who had never worked in the
fields and had kept her hands white and soft, her throat fair and
tender, who had heard great singers in Denver and Salt Lake, and
who knew the strange language of flattery and idleness and mirth.
Yet, careless as he seemed, the frantic prayers of his mother
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Case of the Registered Letter by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: something awakes within him, a spirit akin to that which holds
the bloodhound nose to trail, and he will accomplish the apparently
impossible, he will track down his victim when the entire machinery
of a great police department seems helpless to discover anything.
The high chiefs and commissioners grant a condescending permission
when Muller asks, "May I do this? ... or may I handle this case
this way?" both parties knowing all the while that it is a farce,
and that the department waits helpless until this humble little
man saves its honour by solving some problem before which its
intricate machinery has stood dazed and puzzled.
This call of the trail is something that is stronger than anything
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Red Seal by Natalie Sumner Lincoln: "I have no further questions, Miss McIntyre," he said, and turned
to the morgue master. "Ask Miss Barbara McIntyre to come to the
platform." Turning back to his table and the papers thereon he
failed to see the twins pass each other in the aisle. They were
identically attired and when Coroner Penfield looked again at the
witness chair, he stared in surprise at its occupant.
"I beg pardon, Miss McIntyre, I desire your sister to testify,"
he remarked.
"I am Barbara McIntyre." A haunting quality in her voice caught
Kent's attention, and he leaned eagerly forward, his eyes following
each movement of her nervous fingers, busily twisting her gloves
The Red Seal |
