| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Virginian by Owen Wister: Virginian spoke with a reassuring drawl.
Upon this there fell a brief silence, and I heard the drummer
clear his throat once or twice.
"It's merely the nightmare, I suppose?" he said after a throat
clearing.
"Lord, yes. That's all. And don't happen twice a year. Was you
thinkin' it was fits?"
"Oh, no! I just wanted to know. I've been told before that it was
not safe for a person to be waked suddenly that way out of a
nightmare."
"Yes, I have heard that too. But it never harms me any. I didn't
The Virginian |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Flame and Shadow by Sara Teasdale: But when have I been sure as now
That no bitterness can bend
And no sorrow wholly bow
One who loves you to the end?
And though I must give my breath
And my laughter all to death,
And my eyes through which joy came,
And my heart, a wavering flame;
If all must leave me and go back
Along a blind and fearful track
So that you can make anew,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: bitterness. She told nothing, she judged nothing; she accepted
everything but the possibility of her return to the old symbols.
Stransom divined that for her too they had been vividly individual,
had stood for particular hours or particular attributes -
particular links in her chain. He made it clear to himself, as he
believed, that his difficulty lay in the fact that the very nature
of the plea for his faithless friend constituted a prohibition;
that it happened to have come from HER was precisely the vice that
attached to it. To the voice of impersonal generosity he felt sure
he would have listened; he would have deferred to an advocate who,
speaking from abstract justice, knowing of his denial without
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