| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde: mysterious reason why you will always like me?
MRS. ALLONBY. It is that you have never made love to me.
LORD ILLINGWORTH. I have never done anything else.
MRS. ALLONBY. Really? I have not noticed it.
LORD ILLINGWORTH. How fortunate! It might have been a tragedy for
both of us.
MRS. ALLONBY. We should each have survived.
LORD ILLINGWORTH. One can survive everything nowadays, except
death, and live down anything except a good reputation.
MRS. ALLONBY. Have you tried a good reputation?
LORD ILLINGWORTH. It is one of the many annoyances to which I have
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Mistress Wilding by Rafael Sabatini: Duke, the nostrils of his heavy nose dilating. "Are we to listen to
this milksop prattle?"
Nick Trenchard, who had hitherto been silent, cleared his throat so
noisily that he drew all eyes to himself.
"Your Grace," Mr. Wilding pursued, his air calm and dignified, and
gathering more dignity from the circumstance that he proceeded as if
there had been no interruption, "when I had the honour of conferring
with you at The Hague two months ago, it was agreed that you should
spend the summer in Sweden - away from politics and scheming, leaving
the work of preparation to your accredited agents here. That work I
have been slowly but surely pushing forward. It was not to be hurried;
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac: though in fact it was quite mysterious. He lived in a lodging that was
modest, to say the best of it, in the rue du Cours, on the second
floor of a house belonging to Madame Lardot, the best and busiest
washerwoman in the town. This circumstance will explain the excessive
nicety of his linen. Ill-luck would have it that the day came when
Alencon was guilty of believing that the chevalier had not always
comported himself as a gentleman should, and that in fact he was
secretly married in his old age to a certain Cesarine,--the mother of
a child which had had the impertinence to come into the world without
being called for.
"He had given his hand," as a certain Monsieur du Bousquier remarked,
|
