| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ten Years Later by Alexandre Dumas: servants went to the cardinal's kitchen to inquire if there
were any dinner for the king. And look! to-day, this very
day even, when I am twenty-two years of age, -- to-day, when
I have attained the grade of the majority of kings, --
to-day, when I ought to have the key of the treasury, the
direction of the policy, the supremacy in peace and war, --
cast your eyes around me, see how I am left! Look at this
abandonment -- this disdain -- this silence! -- Whilst
yonder -- look yonder! View the bustle, the lights, the
homage! There! -- there you see the real king of France, my
brother!
Ten Years Later |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: I held up my lamp, let the light play on the different objects as if it
could tell me something. Still there came no movement from the other room.
If Miss Tita was sleeping she was sleeping sound. Was she doing so--
generous creature--on purpose to leave me the field? Did she know
I was there and was she just keeping quiet to see what I would do--
what I COULD do? But what could I do, when it came to that?
She herself knew even better than I how little.
I stopped in front of the secretary, looking at it
very idiotically; for what had it to say to me after all?
In the first place it was locked, and in the second it
almost surely contained nothing in which I was interested.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott: mere grounds of suspicion or mercenary information. Some
nonsense about your proposing to enter into the service of
France, or of the Pretender, I don't recollect which, but which
the Marquis of A----, one of your best friends, and another
person, whom some call one of your worst and most interested
enemies, could not, somehow, be brought to listen to."
"I am obliged to my honourable friend; and yet," shaking the
Lord Keeper's hand--"and yet I am still more obliged to my
honourable enemy."
"Inimicus amicissimus," said the Lord Keeper, returning the
pressure; "but this gentleman--this Mr. Hayston of Bucklaw--I am
The Bride of Lammermoor |
