| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from One Basket by Edna Ferber: bookkeepers, and small shopkeepers. The women did their own
housework in drab garments and soiled boudoir caps that hid a
multitude of unkempt heads. They seemed to find a great deal of
time for amiable, empty gabbling From seven to four you might see
a pair of boudoir caps leaning from opposite bedroom windows,
conversing across back porches, pausing in the task of sweeping
front steps, standing at a street corner, laden with grocery
bundles. Minnie wasted hours in what she called "running over
to Ma's for a minute." The two quarreled a great deal, being so
nearly of a nature. But the very qualities that combated each
other seemed, by some strange chemical process, to bring them
One Basket |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Main Street by Sinclair Lewis: been before time was. The towns had been staked out on barren
prairie as convenient points for future train-halts; and back
in 1860 and 1870 there had been much profit, much opportunity
to found aristocratic families, in the possession of advance
knowledge as to where the towns would arise.
If a town was in disfavor, the railroad could ignore it, cut
it off from commerce, slay it. To Gopher Prairie the
tracks were eternal verities, and boards of railroad directors
an omnipotence. The smallest boy or the most secluded
grandam could tell you whether No. 32 had a hot-box last
Tuesday, whether No. 7 was going to put on an extra day-
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A treatise on Good Works by Dr. Martin Luther: It must be, indeed, that even in the spiritual estate the greater
part preach false doctrine and misuse spiritual power, so that
thus occasion may be given us to do the works of this
Commandment, and that we be tried, to see what we are willing to
do and to leave undone against such blasphemers for the sake of
God's honor.
Oh, if we were God-fearing in this matter, how often would the
knaves of officiales have to decree their papal and episcopal ban
in vain! How weak the Roman thunderbolts would become! How often
would many a one have to hold his tongue, to whom the world must
now give ear! How few preachers would be found in Christendom!
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