| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen: just what I made up my mind to come to you, as I know you're a
practical man."
Mr. Villiers was ignorant of the "Memoirs to prove the
Existence of the Devil."
"Well, Villiers, I shall be happy to give you my
advice, to the best of my ability. What is the nature of the
case?"
"It's an extraordinary thing altogether. You know my
ways; I always keep my eyes open in the streets, and in my time
I have chanced upon some queer customers, and queer cases too,
but this, I think, beats all. I was coming out of a restaurant
The Great God Pan |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: pretends that the place of this or that county in the struggle for
the championship is a matter of supreme importance to boys. He
obliged us to affect a passionate interest in the progress of county
matches, to work up unnatural enthusiasms. What a fuss there would
be when some well-trained boy, panting as if from Marathon, appeared
with an evening paper! "I say, you chaps, Middlesex all out for a
hundred and five!"
Under Flack's pressure I became, I confess, a cricket humbug of the
first class. I applied myself industriously year by year to
mastering scores and averages; I pretended that Lords or the Oval
were the places nearest Paradise for me. (I never went to either.)
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Distinguished Provincial at Paris by Honore de Balzac: charms met beneath his pen. He was witty and satirical, he rose to yet
new views of sentiment, of ideas and imagery in literature. With
subtle ingenuity, he went back to his own first impressions of
Nathan's work, when he read it in the newsroom of the Cour du
Commerce; and the ruthless, bloodthirsty critic, the lively mocker,
became a poet in the final phrases which rose and fell with majestic
rhythm like the swaying censer before the altar.
"One hundred francs, Coralie!" cried he, holding up eight sheets of
paper covered with writing while she dressed.
The mood was upon him; he went on to indite, stroke by stroke, the
promised terrible article on Chatelet and Mme. de Bargeton. That
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