| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: Well, about six weeks ago, she heard the name Gatsby for the first time
in years. It was when I asked you--do you remember?--if you knew Gatsby
in West Egg. After you had gone home she came into my room and woke me
up, and said: "What Gatsby?" and when I described him--I was half
asleep--she said in the strangest voice that it must be the man she used
to know. It wasn't until then that I connected this Gatsby with the
officer in her white car.
When Jordan Baker had finished telling all this we had left the Plaza
for half an hour and were driving in a victoria through Central Park.
The sun had gone down behind the tall apartments of the movie stars in
the West Fifties, and the clear voices of girls, already gathered like
The Great Gatsby |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: of its growth, to which they corresponded. This is Shakspeare's.
The tree was seven inches in diameter when he was born; ten inches
when he died. A little less than ten inches when Milton was born;
seventeen when he died. Then comes a long interval, and this
thread marks out Johnson's life, during which the tree increased
from twenty-two to twenty-nine inches in diameter. Here is the
span of Napoleon's career; - the tree doesn't seem to have minded
it.
I never saw the man yet who was not startled at looking on this
section. I have seen many wooden preachers, - never one like this.
How much more striking would be the calendar counted on the rings
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Young Forester by Zane Grey: "Ken, you're going to ring me in next summer!"
II. THE MAN ON THE TRAIN
Travelling was a new experience to me, and on the first night after I left
home I lay awake until we reached Altoona. We rolled out of smoky Pittsburg
at dawn, and from then on the only bitter drop in my cup of bliss was that
the train went so fast I could not see everything out of my window.
Four days to ride! The great Mississippi to cross, the plains, the Rocky
Mountains, then the Arizona plateaus-a long, long journey with a wild pine
forest at the end! I wondered what more any young fellow could have wished.
With my face glued to the car window I watched the level country speed by.
There appeared to be one continuous procession of well-cultivated farms,
The Young Forester |
