| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: hearts do not speak to him at first. He does not appear at all except
in serious cases, such as one corpse mistaken for another, a murdered
body, an exhumation, a dead man coming to life. The bust of the
reigning king is in his hall; possibly he keeps the late royal,
imperial, and quasi-royal busts in some cupboard,--a sort of little
Pere-Lachaise all ready for revolutions. In short, he is a public man,
an excellent man, good husband and good father,--epitaph apart. But so
many diverse sentiments have passed before him on biers; he has seen
so many tears, true and false; he has beheld sorrow under so many
aspects and on so many faces; he has heard such endless thousands of
eternal woes,--that to him sorrow has come to be nothing more than a
Ferragus |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Europeans by Henry James: her door was empty, and Eugenia stood there looking about.
She felt irritated; the dying lady had not "la main heureuse."
She passed slowly down-stairs, still looking about. The broad staircase
made a great bend, and in the angle was a high window, looking westward,
with a deep bench, covered with a row of flowering plants in curious
old pots of blue china-ware. The yellow afternoon light came in
through the flowers and flickered a little on the white wainscots.
Eugenia paused a moment; the house was perfectly still, save for
the ticking, somewhere, of a great clock. The lower hall stretched away
at the foot of the stairs, half covered over with a large Oriental rug.
Eugenia lingered a little, noticing a great many things.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: like her? She might stand beside any lady in the land, and only
look the better for it. You see--Mr. Lydgate has kept the highest
company and been everywhere, and he fell in love with her at once.
Not but what I could have wished Rosamond had not engaged herself.
She might have met somebody on a visit who would have been a far
better match; I mean at her schoolfellow Miss Willoughby's. There are
relations in that family quite as high as Mr. Lydgate's."
"Damn relations!" said Mr. Vincy; "I've had enough of them.
I don't want a son-in-law who has got nothing but his relations
to recommend him."
"Why, my dear," said Mrs. Vincy, "you seemed as pleased as could
Middlemarch |
