| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: has never allowed the public to dictate to him or influence him in
any way but has gone on intensifying his own personality, and
producing his own individual work. At first none came to him.
That did not matter. Then the few came to him. That did not
change him. The many have come now. He is still the same. He is
an incomparable novelist. With the decorative arts it is not
different. The public clung with really pathetic tenacity to what
I believe were the direct traditions of the Great Exhibition of
international vulgarity, traditions that were so appalling that the
houses in which people lived were only fit for blind people to live
in. Beautiful things began to be made, beautiful colours came from
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Reef by Edith Wharton: drive toward the grassy cutting through the wood. Her air
was less of expectancy than of contemplation: she seemed not
so much to be watching for any one, or listening for an
approaching sound, as letting the whole aspect of the place
sink into her while she held herself open to its influence.
Yet it was no less apparent that the scene was not new to
her. There was no eagerness of investigation in her survey:
she seemed rather to be looking about her with eyes to
which, for some intimate inward reason, details long since
familiar had suddenly acquired an unwonted freshness.
This was in fact the exact sensation of which Mrs. Leath was
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Dust by Mr. And Mrs. Haldeman-Julius: have." The twisting agony of it--that he could make capital out
of the very crux of all her suffering. "I have never deceived you
and I never intend to. My life with you hasn't been a Song of
Solomon, but I'm not complaining."
"You're not complaining! I hope I won't start complaining,
Martin."
"Well, now you know how I feel. I'll go on with the present
arrangement between us, but I'm playing square with you--it's
because there's no hope for me. If I thought she cared for me, I
would go to her, right now, tonight, and pour out my heart to
her, wife or no wife. Oh, Rose, have pity! It can't do you any
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