| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte: exquisitely fair, though not without a brilliant, healthy bloom;
her hair, which she wore in a profusion of long ringlets, was of a
very light brown inclining to yellow; her eyes were pale blue, but
so clear and bright that few would wish them darker; the rest of
her features were small, not quite regular, and not remarkably
otherwise: but altogether you could not hesitate to pronounce her
a very lovely girl. I wish I could say as much for mind and
disposition as I can for her form and face.
Yet think not I have any dreadful disclosures to make: she was
lively, light-hearted, and could be very agreeable, with those who
did not cross her will. Towards me, when I first came, she was
Agnes Grey |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: pinnacle of the barn. In the mean time, Ichabod would carry on
his suit with the daughter by the side of the spring under the
great elm, or sauntering along in the twilight, that hour so
favorable to the lover's eloquence.
I profess not to know how women's hearts are wooed and won.
To me they have always been matters of riddle and admiration.
Some seem to have but one vulnerable point, or door of access;
while others have a thousand avenues, and may be captured in a
thousand different ways. It is a great triumph of skill to gain
the former, but a still greater proof of generalship to maintain
possession of the latter, for man must battle for his fortress at
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: contradict myself?" he asks somewhere; and then pat comes the
answer, the best answer ever given in print, worthy of a
sage, or rather of a woman: "Very well, then, I contradict
myself!" with this addition, not so feminine and perhaps not
altogether so satisfactory: "I am large - I contain
multitudes." Life, as a matter of fact, partakes largely of
the nature of tragedy. The gospel according to Whitman, even
if it be not so logical, has this advantage over the gospel
according to Pangloss, that it does not utterly disregard the
existence of temporal evil. Whitman accepts the fact of
disease and wretchedness like an honest man; and instead of
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