| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Falk by Joseph Conrad: dwarfs, would naturally assume, without in the
least wishing to be unkind. But amongst men of
his own stature, or nearly, this frank use of his ad-
vantages, in such matters as the awful towage bills
for instance, caused much impotent gnashing of
teeth. When attentively considered it seemed ap-
palling at times. He was a strange beast. But
maybe women liked it. Seen in that light he was
well worth taming, and I suppose every woman at
the bottom of her heart considers herself as a tamer
of strange beasts. But Hermann arose with pre-
Falk |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Emma McChesney & Co. by Edna Ferber: Emma glanced up at him as he stood there, so tall and straight
and altogether good to look at, and the glow of love and pride in
her eyes belied the lightness of her words.
"I know it," she said, with mock seriousness, "and it worries
me. I can't imagine why I fail to feel those pangs that mothers
are supposed to suffer at this time. I ought to rend my garments
and beat my breast, but I can't help thinking of what a stunning
girl Grace Galt is, and what a brain she has, and how lucky you
are to get her. Any girl--with the future that girl had in the
advertising field--who'll give up four thousand a year and her
independence to marry a man does it for love, let me tell you.
Emma McChesney & Co. |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: touch-stone of reality that few feigned emotions could withstand.
When Phoebe broke into a peal of merry laughter at what she read,
he would now and then laugh for sympathy, but oftener respond with
a troubled, questioning look. If a tear--a maiden's sunshiny tear
over imaginary woe--dropped upon some melancholy page, Clifford
either took it as a token of actual calamity, or else grew
peevish, and angrily motioned her to close the volume. And
wisely too! Is not the world sad enough, in genuine earnest,
without making a pastime of mock sorrows?
With poetry it was rather better. He delighted in the swell and
subsidence of the rhythm, and the happily recurring rhyme. Nor
House of Seven Gables |
