| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett: still less care which the patient creatures needed. The hot
midsummer sun makes prisons of these small islands that are a
paradise in early June, with their cool springs and short thick-
growing grass. On a larger island, farther out to sea, my
entertaining companion showed me with glee the small houses of two
farmers who shared the island between them, and declared that for
three generations the people had not spoken to each other even in
times of sickness or death or birth. "When the news come that the
war was over, one of 'em knew it a week, and never stepped across
his wall to tell the other," she said. "There, they enjoy it;
they've got to have somethin' to interest 'em in such a place; 'tis
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: circling cabman hovered over possible prey. He paused on a corner
and measured the dreariness; then he made out through the gathered
dusk that he was in one of those tracts of London which are less
gloomy by night than by day, because, in the former case of the
civil gift of light. By day there was nothing, but by night there
were lamps, and George Stransom was in a mood that made lamps good
in themselves. It wasn't that they could show him anything, it was
only that they could burn clear. To his surprise, however, after a
while, they did show him something: the arch of a high doorway
approached by a low terrace of steps, in the depth of which - it
formed a dim vestibule - the raising of a curtain at the moment he
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: it.
As she walked slowly upstairs she thought of yesterday;
it had been about the same hour that she had returned
from the Parsonage, and found Edmund in the East room.
"Suppose I were to find him there again to-day!" said she
to herself, in a fond indulgence of fancy.
"Fanny," said a voice at that moment near her.
Starting and looking up, she saw, across the lobby she
had just reached, Edmund himself, standing at the head
of a different staircase. He came towards her. "You look
tired and fagged, Fanny. You have been walking too far."
Mansfield Park |
