| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: surrounding the parsonage, above which the rock rose like a white wall
surmounted by slender trees that drooped and swayed above it like
plumes.
The ruins of the castle looked down upon the house and church. The
house, built of pebbles and mortar, had but one story surmounted by an
enormous sloping roof with gable ends, in which were attics, no doubt
empty, considering the dilapidation of their windows. The ground-floor
had two rooms parted by a corridor, at the farther end of which was a
wooden staircase leading to the second floor, which also had two
rooms. A little kitchen was at the back of the building in a yard,
where were the stable and coach-house, both unused, deserted, and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: against him again, the narrative seriously impairs the integrity
of history. What he did say was:
"It ain't no (hic) no use. 'At man's so drunk he can't stan'
still long enough for a man to hit him. I (hic) I can't 'ford
to fool away any more am'nition on him."
That was why he stopped at the seventeenth round, and it was a good,
plain, matter-of-fact reason, too, and one that easily commends itself
to us by the eloquent, persuasive flavor of probability there is about it.
I also enjoyed the story-book narrative, but I felt a marring misgiving
that every Indian at Braddock's Defeat who fired at a soldier
a couple of times (two easily grows to seventeen in a century),
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: I took off my long woollen comforter and wound it around Yulka's throat.
She got so cold that we made her hide her head under the buffalo robe.
Antonia and I sat erect, but I held the reins clumsily,
and my eyes were blinded by the wind a good deal of the time.
It was growing dark when we got to their house, but I refused
to go in with them and get warm. I knew my hands would ache
terribly if I went near a fire. Yulka forgot to give me back
my comforter, and I had to drive home directly against the wind.
The next day I came down with an attack of quinsy, which kept me
in the house for nearly two weeks.
The basement kitchen seemed heavenly safe and warm in those days--
My Antonia |
