| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad: of clever, peering, unbelieving black eyes. He wrote verses too.
Rather an ass. But the band of men who trailed at the skirts of his
monumental frock-coat seemed to perceive wonderful things in what he
said. Alvan Hervey put it down to affectation. Those artist chaps,
upon the whole, were so affected. Still, all this was highly
proper--very useful to him--and his wife seemed to like it--as if she
also had derived some distinct and secret advantage from this
intellectual connection. She received her mixed and decorous guests
with a kind of tall, ponderous grace, peculiarly her own and which
awakened in the mind of intimidated strangers incongruous and
improper reminiscences of an elephant, a giraffe, a gazelle; of a
Tales of Unrest |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: the pleasantry had some truth in it, as spoken by a man left for dead
at the bloody battle of Les Quatre Chemins. Though ruined by
confiscation, the staunch Vendeen steadily refused the lucrative posts
offered to him by the Emperor Napoleon. Immovable in his aristocratic
faith, he had blindly obeyed its precepts when he thought it fitting
to choose a companion for life. In spite of the blandishments of a
rich but revolutionary parvenu, who valued the alliance at a high
figure, he married Mademoiselle de Kergarouet, without a fortune, but
belonging to one of the oldest families in Brittany.
When the second revolution burst on Monsieur de Fontaine he was
encumbered with a large family. Though it was no part of the noble
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Emerald City of Oz by L. Frank Baum: rabbit miserable?"
"Once," said Dorothy, reflectively, "men were wild and unclothed and
lived in caves and hunted for food as wild beasts do. But they got
civ'lized, in time, and now they'd hate to go back to the old days."
"That is an entirely different case," replied the King. "None of you
Humans were civilized in one lifetime. It came to you by degrees.
But I have known the forest and the free life, and that is why I
resent being civilized all at once, against my will, and being made a
King with a crown and an ermine robe. Pah!"
"If you don't like it, why don't you resign?" she asked.
"Impossible!" wailed the Rabbit, wiping his eyes again with his
The Emerald City of Oz |
