| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Buttered Side Down by Edna Ferber: "Remember that Wenzel girl that's kept books for me for the
last six years? She's leaving in a couple of months to marry a New
York guy that travels for ladies' cloaks and suits. After she goes
it's nix with the lady bookkeepers for me. Not that Minnie isn't
a good, straight girl, and honest, but no girl can keep books with
one eye on a column of figures and the other on a traveling man in
a brown suit and a red necktie, unless she's cross-eyed, and you
bet Minnie ain't. The job's yours if you want it. Eighty a month
to start on, and board."
"I--can't, Jo. Thanks just the same. I'm going to try to
begin all over again, somewhere else, where nobody knows me."
Buttered Side Down |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Cousin Pons by Honore de Balzac: "Very well. Let me arrange it for you," said Gaudissart. Fraisier had
told him the whole story only yesterday, and he thought that he saw
his way to making interest out of the case with the young Vicomtesse
Popinot and her mother. He would finish a dirty piece of work, and
some day he would be a privy councillor, at least; or so he told
himself.
"I gif you full powers."
"Well. Let me see. Now, to begin with," said Gaudissart, Napoleon of
the boulevard theatres, "to begin with, here are a hundred crowns--"
(he took fifteen louis from his purse and handed them to Schmucke).
"That is yours, on account of six months' salary. If you leave the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: I was struck. "But of whom did you speak first?"
She looked blank, but she colored. "Why, of HIM."
"Of the master?"
"Of who else?"
There was so obviously no one else that the next moment I
had lost my impression of her having accidentally said more
than she meant; and I merely asked what I wanted to know.
"Did SHE see anything in the boy--?"
"That wasn't right? She never told me."
I had a scruple, but I overcame it. "Was she careful--particular?"
Mrs. Grose appeared to try to be conscientious.
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