| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: expressed the hope that in spite of the very hot weather it was satisfactory.
She replied that it was good enough--good enough; that it was a great
thing to be alive.
"Oh, as to that, it depends upon what you compare it with!"
I exclaimed, laughing.
"I don't compare--I don't compare. If I did that I should have given
everything up long ago."
I liked to think that this was a subtle allusion to the rapture
she had known in the society of Jeffrey Aspern--though it
was true that such an allusion would have accorded ill with
the wish I imputed to her to keep him buried in her soul.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Land that Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: face of the swift-following conviction that the one who fought
below was already doomed. Luck and only luck it must have
been which had permitted that first shot to lay low one of the
savage creatures, for even such a heavy weapon as my pistol is
entirely inadequate against even the lesser carnivora of Caspak.
In a moment the three would charge! a futile shot would but tend
more greatly to enrage the one it chanced to hit; and then the
three would drag down the little human figure and tear it to pieces.
And maybe it was Lys! My heart stood still at the thought, but mind
and muscle responded to the quick decision I was forced to make.
There was but a single hope--a single chance--and I took it.
The Land that Time Forgot |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Mother by Owen Wister: bell. 'You happen to have come,' said he, 'on a morning when I can really
do something for you out of the common. Bring me (it was a clerk he
addressed) one of those Petunia circulars. Now here you can see at a
glance for yourself.' He began reading the prospectus rapidly aloud to me
while I followed its paragraphs with my own eye. His strong,
well-polished thumb-nail ran heavily but speedily down the columns of
figures and such words as gross receipts, increase of population, sinking
fund, redeemable at 105 after 1920, churned vigorously and meaninglessly
through my brain. But I was not going to let him know that to understand
the circular I should have to take it away quietly to my desk in Nassau
Street, and spend an hour with it alone."
|
