| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair: the homeless and starving of the city came trudging through the snow from
all over its two hundred square miles. That night forty score of them
crowded into the station house of the stockyards district--they filled
the rooms, sleeping in each other's laps, toboggan fashion, and they
piled on top of each other in the corridors, till the police shut the
doors and left some to freeze outside. On the morrow, before daybreak,
there were three thousand at Durham's, and the police reserves had to be
sent for to quell the riot. Then Durham's bosses picked out twenty of
the biggest; the "two hundred" proved to have been a printer's error.
Four or five miles to the eastward lay the lake, and over this the bitter
winds came raging. Sometimes the thermometer would fall to ten or twenty
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy: Yet the intrinsic quality of the event moved his touchy
sensitiveness less than its conjectured effect upon the
minds of others.
"To think, now, that this was to be the end o't!" said
Sir John. "And I with a family vault under that there
church of Kingsbere as big as Squire Jollard's
ale-cellar, and my folk lying there in sixes and
sevens, as genuine county bones and marrow as any
recorded in history. And now to be sure what they
fellers at Rolliver's and The Pure Drop will say to me!
How they'll squint and glane, and say, 'This is yer
 Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Arizona Nights by Stewart Edward White:
Truth to tell, Senor Johnson had very little idea of what he was
going to do. His action was entirely instinctive. The wheel
tracks held to the southwest so he held to the southwest, too.
The pony hit his stride. The miles slipped by. After seven of
them the animal slowed to a walk. Senor Johnson allowed him to
get his wind, then spurred him on again. He did not even take
the ordinary precautions of a pursuer. He did not even glance to
the horizon in search.
|