| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Cousin Pons by Honore de Balzac: forth and so forth.
Two or three of the set came to call on the Presidente, ostensibly to
congratulate, but really to find out whether or not the marvelous tale
were true. For their benefit Mme. de Marville executed the following
admirable variations on the theme of son-in-law which mothers may
consult, as people used to refer to the /Complete Letter Writer/.
"A marriage is not an accomplished fact," she told Mme. Chiffreville,
"until you have been in the mayor's office and the church. We have
only come as far as a personal interview; so I count upon your
friendship to say nothing of our hopes."
"You are very fortunate, madame; marriages are so difficult to arrange
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: to himself the theory. "What if the souls purchased by Chichikov
should REALLY be dead ones?"--a terrible thought considering that
he, the President, had permitted their transferment to be registered,
and had himself acted as Plushkin's representative! What if these
things should reach the Governor-General's ears? He mentioned the
matter to one friend and another, and they, in their turn, went white
to the lips, for panic spreads faster and is even more destructive,
than the dreaded black death. Also, to add to the tchinovniks'
troubles, it so befell that just at this juncture there came into the
local Governor's hands two documents of great importance. The first of
them contained advices that, according to received evidence and
Dead Souls |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: between hotels and clubs and private houses made her hard to find
in any other way. Usually her voice came over the wire as something
fresh and cool, as if a divot from a green golf-links had come
sailing in at the office window, but this morning it seemed harsh and dry.
"I've left Daisy's house," she said. "I'm at Hempstead, and I'm going down
to Southampton this afternoon."
Probably it had been tactful to leave Daisy's house, but the act
annoyed me, and her next remark made me rigid.
"You weren't so nice to me last night."
"How could it have mattered then?"
Silence for a moment. Then:
The Great Gatsby |
