| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: he exclaimed angrily, "as if it was a matter of no importance.
Yes, he is dead! Do you understand? Dead! What do you care?
You never cared; you saw me struggle, and work, and strive,
unmoved; and my suffering you could never see. No, never. You
have no heart, and you have no mind, or you would have understood
that it was for you, for your happiness I was working. I wanted
to be rich; I wanted to get away from here. I wanted to see
white men bowing low before the power of your beauty and your
wealth. Old as I am I wished to seek a strange land, a
civilisation to which I am a stranger, so as to find a new life
in the contemplation of your high fortunes, of your triumphs, of
Almayer's Folly |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: Rosalie had presence of mind enough to disguise her delight, so as to
work more effectually on her father.
"What action?" said she.
"Mademoiselle, the people of Riceys," said Modinier, "have long
enjoyed the right of grazing and cutting fodder on their side of the
Dent de Vilard. Now Monsieur Chantonnit, the Maire since 1830,
declares that the whole Dent belongs to his district, and maintains
that a hundred years ago, or more, there was a way through our
grounds. You understand that in that case we should no longer have
them to ourselves. Then this barbarian would end by saying, what the
old men in the village say, that the ground occupied by the lake was
Albert Savarus |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain: we wanted now was rest and sleep. The king broke in:
"Sell us the house and take yourselves away, for
we be perilous company, being late come from people
that died of the Spotted Death."
It was good of him, but unnecessary. One of the
commonest decorations of the nation was the waffle-
iron face. I had early noticed that the woman and her
husband were both so decorated. She made us entirely
welcome, and had no fears; and plainly she was im-
mensely impressed by the king's proposition; for, of
course, it was a good deal of an event in her life to
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court |
