| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dracula by Bram Stoker: himself to restore things to the condition in which we left
them the night before, so that when Arthur came such shocks
to his feelings as we could avoid were saved.
Poor fellow! He looked desperately sad and broken. Even his stalwart manhood
seemed to have shrunk somewhat under the strain of his much-tried emotions.
He had, I knew, been very genuinely and devotedly attached to his father,
and to lose him, and at such a time, was a bitter blow to him.
With me he was warm as ever, and to Van Helsing he was sweetly courteous.
But I could not help seeing that there was some constraint with him.
The professor noticed it too, and motioned me to bring him upstairs.
I did so, and left him at the door of the room, as I felt he would like to
Dracula |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: Brosse made her one of the most powerful and best titled women in
France. Catherine's aunt the Duchess of Albany, the Queen of Navarre,
the Duchesse de Guise, the Duchesse de Vendome, Madame la Connetable
de Montmorency, and other women of like importance, eclipsed by birth
and by their rights, as well as by their power at the most sumptuous
court of France (not excepting that of Louis XIV.), the daughter of
the Florentine grocers, who was richer and more illustrious through
the house of the Tour de Boulogne than by her own family of Medici.
The position of his niece was so bad and difficult that the republican
Filippo Strozzi, wholly incapable of guiding her in the midst of such
conflicting interests, left her after the first year, being recalled
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Odyssey by Homer: can read these omens myself much better than you can; birds are
always flying about in the sunshine somewhere or other, but they
seldom mean anything. Ulysses has died in a far country, and it
is a pity you are not dead along with him, instead of prating
here about omens and adding fuel to the anger of Telemachus
which is fierce enough as it is. I suppose you think he will
give you something for your family, but I tell you--and it shall
surely be--when an old man like you, who should know better,
talks a young one over till he becomes troublesome, in the first
place his young friend will only fare so much the worse--he will
take nothing by it, for the suitors will prevent this--and in
The Odyssey |
