| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from One Basket by Edna Ferber: valve.
As winter came on she used to sit up before her grate fire long,
long after we were asleep in our beds. When she neglected to
pull down the shades we could see the flames of her cosy fire
dancing gnomelike on the wall.
There came a night of sleet and snow, and wind and rattling
hail--one of those blustering, wild nights that are followed by
morning-paper reports of trains stalled in drifts, mail delayed,
telephone and telegraph wires down. It must have been midnight
or past when there came a hammering at Blanche Devine's door--a
persistent, clamorous rapping. Blanche Devine, sitting before
One Basket |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: inheritance of the first; and he watches this lesser deity
struggling between life and death with an intensity of which we, in
these less loyal days, can form no notion. One would be glad to
have a glimpse of what passed through that mind, so subtle and so
ruthless, so disciplined and so loyal withal: but Alva was a man
who was not given to speak his mind, but to act it.
One would wish, too, for a glimpse of what was passing through the
mind of another man, who has been daily in that sick chamber,
according to Olivarez's statement, since the first of the month:
but he is one who has had, for some years past, even more reason
than Alva for not speaking his mind. What he looked like we know
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: and she led me to the door of her aunt's apartment.
I stopped her a moment before she had opened it, looking at
her with some curiosity. I told her that this was a great
satisfaction to me and a great honor; but all the same I should
like to ask what had made Miss Bordereau change so suddenly.
It was only the other day that she wouldn't suffer me near her.
Miss Tita was not embarrassed by my question; she had as many
little unexpected serenities as if she told fibs, but the odd
part of them was that they had on the contrary their source
in her truthfulness. "Oh, my aunt changes," she answered;
"it's so terribly dull--I suppose she's tired."
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