| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Professor by Charlotte Bronte: Were heard the troopers keen;
And frequent from the Whitelaw ridge
The death-shot flash'd between,'" &c. &c.
The old Scotch ballad was partly recited, then dropt; a pause
ensued; then another strain followed, in French, of which the
purport, translated, ran as follows:--
I gave, at first, attention close;
Then interest warm ensued;
From interest, as improvement rose,
Succeeded gratitude.
Obedience was no effort soon,
The Professor |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: Such was the nightly ceremony of the cigar and the glass of port,
which were placed on the right hand and on the left hand of Mr.
Hilbery, and simultaneously Mrs. Hilbery and Katharine left the room.
All the years they had lived together they had never seen Mr. Hilbery
smoke his cigar or drink his port, and they would have felt it
unseemly if, by chance, they had surprised him as he sat there. These
short, but clearly marked, periods of separation between the sexes
were always used for an intimate postscript to what had been said at
dinner, the sense of being women together coming out most strongly
when the male sex was, as if by some religious rite, secluded from the
female. Katharine knew by heart the sort of mood that possessed her as
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad: sound, on the thick carpet, and instinctively he stooped to pick them
up. While he groped at her feet it occurred to him that the woman
there had in her hands an indispensable gift which nothing else on
earth could give; and when he stood up he was penetrated by an
irresistible belief in an enigma, by the conviction that within his
reach and passing away from him was the very secret of existence--its
certitude, immaterial and precious! She moved to the door, and he
followed at her elbow, casting about for a magic word that would make
the enigma clear, that would compel the surrender of the gift. And
there is no such word! The enigma is only made clear by sacrifice, and
the gift of heaven is in the hands of every man. But they had lived in
Tales of Unrest |
