| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: as if she intended to swear eternal hatred against the whole world;
"another lady in my place would have perhaps answered your question
in bitter coldness. I know not the little arts of my sex.
I care but little for the vanity of those who would chide me,
and am unwilling as well as ashamed to be guilty of anything
that would lead you to think 'all is not gold that glitters';
so be no rash in your resolution. It is better to repent now,
than to do it in a more solemn hour. Yes, I know what you would say.
I know you have a costly gift for me--the noblest that man can make--
YOUR HEART! You should not offer it to one so unworthy.
Heaven, you know, has allowed my father's house to be made a house
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: face the absolute prohibition of a return to England. The
consideration of climate imposed itself, and he was in no state to
meet it alone. I took him to Meran and there spent the summer with
him, trying to show him by example how to get back to work and
nursing a rage of another sort that I tried NOT to show him.
The whole business proved the first of a series of phenomena so
strangely interlaced that, taken together - which was how I had to
take them - they form as good an illustration as I can recall of
the manner in which, for the good of his soul doubtless, fate
sometimes deals with a man's avidity. These incidents certainly
had larger bearings than the comparatively meagre consequence we
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Emma by Jane Austen: She saw that Enscombe could not satisfy, and that Highbury,
taken at its best, might reasonably please a young man who had more
retirement at home than he liked. His importance at Enscombe was
very evident. He did not boast, but it naturally betrayed itself,
that he had persuaded his aunt where his uncle could do nothing,
and on her laughing and noticing it, he owned that he believed (excepting
one or two points) he could with time persuade her to any thing.
One of those points on which his influence failed, he then mentioned.
He had wanted very much to go abroad--had been very eager indeed
to be allowed to travel--but she would not hear of it. This had
happened the year before. Now, he said, he was beginning to have
Emma |
