| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Lesson of the Master by Henry James: the light was long; but even when it had darkened he remained
without a lamp. He had flung himself on the sofa, where he lay
through the hours with his eyes either closed or gazing at the
gloom, in the attitude of a man teaching himself to bear something,
to bear having been made a fool of. He had made it too easy - that
idea passed over him like a hot wave. Suddenly, as he heard eleven
o'clock strike, he jumped up, remembering what General Fancourt had
said about his coming after dinner. He'd go - he'd see her at
least; perhaps he should see what it meant. He felt as if some of
the elements of a hard sum had been given him and the others were
wanting: he couldn't do his sum till he had got all his figures.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: business of the address and envelope. But I hope to be more
fortunate with this: for, besides the usual and often recurrent
desire to thank you for your work-you are one of four that have
come to the front since I was watching and had a corner of my own
to watch, and there is no reason, unless it be in these mysterious
tides that ebb and flow, and make and mar and murder the works of
poor scribblers, why you should not do work of the best order. The
tides have borne away my sentence, of which I was weary at any
rate, and between authors I may allow myself so much freedom as to
leave it pending. We are both Scots besides, and I suspect both
rather Scotty Scots; my own Scotchness tends to intermittency, but
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: her perpetual absence. Then, though it was impossible to discover by
whom the secret had been betrayed, all the town became aware that ever
since New Year's day Mademoiselle Grandet had been kept in her room
without fire, on bread and water, by her father's orders, and that
Nanon cooked little dainties and took them to her secretly at night.
It was even known that the young woman was not able to see or take
care of her mother, except at certain times when her father was out of
the house.
Grandet's conduct was severely condemned. The whole town outlawed him,
so to speak; they remembered his treachery, his hard-heartedness, and
they excommunicated him. When he passed along the streets, people
Eugenie Grandet |
