| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: me--YET--but you're fond of luxury, and style, and amusement, and
of not having to worry about cash. You like to have a good time,
and not have to settle for it; and what I propose to do is to
provide for the good time and do the settling."
He paused, and she returned with a chilling smile: "You are
mistaken in one point, Mr. Rosedale: whatever I enjoy I am
prepared to settle for."
She spoke with the intention of making him see that, if his words
implied a tentative allusion to her private affairs, she was
prepared to meet and repudiate it. But if he recognized her
meaning it failed to abash him, and he went on in the same tone:
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy: but especially since that first of March, when Alexander II was
murdered, Nekhludoff regarded the revolutionists with dislike and
contempt. He was repulsed by the cruelty and secrecy of the
methods they employed in their struggles against the government,
especially the cruel murders they committed, and their arrogance
also disgusted him. But having learned more intimately to know
them and all they had suffered at the hands of the government, he
saw that they could not be other than they were
Terrible and endless as were the torments which were inflicted on
the criminals, there was at least some semblance of justice shown
them before and after they were sentenced, but in the case of the
Resurrection |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: of the commercial machinery which, by enabling the starving
region to be fed out of the surplus of more favoured localities,
has in the most advanced countries rendered a great famine
practically impossible.
Now this state of things the government of 1770 was indeed
powerless to remedy. Legislative power and wisdom could not
anticipate the invention of railroads; nor could it introduce
throughout the length and breadth of Bengal a system of coaches,
canals, and caravans; nor could it all at once do away with the
time-honoured brigandage, which increased the cost of transport
by decreasing the security of it; nor could it in a trice remove
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
