| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: knowing or caring, so she was not tantalized and enraged, only here,
with eyes half-shut and lips pursed together, the atmosphere of
forced solemnity increased her anger. All round her were people
pretending to feel what they did not feel, while somewhere above
her floated the idea which they could none of them grasp, which they
pretended to grasp, always escaping out of reach, a beautiful idea,
an idea like a butterfly. One after another, vast and hard and cold,
appeared to her the churches all over the world where this blundering
effort and misunderstanding were perpetually going on, great buildings,
filled with innumerable men and women, not seeing clearly,
who finally gave up the effort to see, and relapsed tamely into praise
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Buttered Side Down by Edna Ferber: unfortunate in falling in with that one. But it was an Eastern
trip, and every port was a Port Said. Eddie Houghton's thoughts
were not these men's thoughts; his actions were not their actions,
his practices were not their practices. To Eddie Houghton, a
Chinese woman in a sampan on the water front at Shanghai was
something picturesque; something about which to write home to his
mother and to Josie. To those other men she was possible prey.
Those other men saw that he was different, and they pestered
him. They ill-treated him when they could, and made his life a
hellish thing. Men do those things, and people do not speak of it.
I don't know all the things that he suffered. But in his mind, day
Buttered Side Down |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: devotion, and his past services, when the storm of July 1830 broke,
and again his bark was swamped.
She, and God! These are the only witnesses of the brave efforts, the
daring attempts of a young man gifted with fine qualities, but to
whom, so far, the protection of luck--the god of fools--has been
denied. And this indefatigable wrestler, upheld by love, comes back to
fresh struggles, lighted on his way by an always friendly eye, an ever
faithful heart.
Lovers! Pray for him!
*****
As she finished this narrative, Mademoiselle de Watteville's cheeks
Albert Savarus |
