| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Horse's Tale by Mark Twain: she standing up for the Cid, and they working George Washington for
all he is worth."
"Do they quarrel?"
"No; it's only disputing, and bragging, the way children do. They
want her to be an American, but she can't be anything but a
Spaniard, she says. You see, her mother was always longing for
home, po' thing! and thinking about it, and so the child is just as
much a Spaniard as if she'd always lived there. She thinks she
remembers how Spain looked, but I reckon she don't, because she was
only a baby when they moved to France. She is very proud to be a
Spaniard."
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson: the path."
"It will be an ill job to make a silk purse of a sow's ear," said I.
On the morning of October 1st I was awakened by the clattering in of an
express; and getting to my window almost before he had dismounted, I
saw the messenger had ridden hard. Somewhile after I was called to
Prestongrange, where he was sitting in his bedgown and nightcap, with
his letters round him.
"Mr. David," add he, "I have a piece of news for you. It concerns some
friends of yours, of whom I sometimes think you are a little ashamed,
for you have never referred to their existence."
I suppose I blushed.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac: rustle of the violet silken curtains which the angels raise.
Sculptured golden doors, like those of the baptistery at Florence,
turn on their diamond hinges. The eye is lost in splendid vistas: it
sees a long perspective of rare palaces where beings of a loftier
nature glide. The incense of all prosperities sends up its smoke, the
altar of all joy flames, the perfumed air circulates! Beings with
divine smiles, robed in white tunics bordered with blue, flit lightly
before the eyes and show us visions of supernatural beauty, shapes of
an incomparable delicacy. The Loves hover in the air and waft the
flames of their torches! We feel ourselves beloved; we are happy as we
breathe a joy we understand not, as we bathe in the waves of a harmony
Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |
