| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mountains by Stewart Edward White: fire, shouted: "If you fellows come MOPING around
here any more, I'LL SURE MAKE YOU HARD TO CATCH!"
"Fish in that pond, son? Why, there's some fish
in there big enough to rope," another advised me.
"I quit shoveling," one explained the story of his
life, "because I couldn't see nothing ahead of
shoveling but dirt." The same man described ploughing
as, "Looking at a mule's tail all day." And one of
the most succinct epitomes of the motifs of fiction
was offered by an old fellow who looked over my
shoulder as I was reading a novel. "Well, son," said
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Georgics by Virgil: Subdues him: the shy deer and fleet-foot stags
With hounds now wander by the haunts of men
Vast ocean's offspring, and all tribes that swim,
On the shore's confine the wave washes up,
Like shipwrecked bodies: seals, unwonted there,
Flee to the rivers. Now the viper dies,
For all his den's close winding, and with scales
Erect the astonied water-worms. The air
Brooks not the very birds, that headlong fall,
And leave their life beneath the soaring cloud.
Moreover now nor change of fodder serves,
 Georgics |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Malbone: An Oldport Romance by Thomas Wentworth Higginson: the first time found a perfectly translucent medium. It was
not so much that she said rare things, but her very silence was
eloquent, and there was a great deal of it. Her girlhood had in
it a certain dignity as of a virgin priestess or sibyl. Yet
her hearty sympathies and her healthy energy made her at home
in daily life, and in a democratic society. To Kate, for
instance, she was a necessity of existence, like light or air.
Kate's nature was limited; part of her graceful equipoise was
narrowness. Hope was capable of far more self-abandonment to a
controlling emotion, and, if she ever erred, would err more
widely, for it would be because the whole power of her
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