| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: closed up, has rejected all nourishment, under whatever form we
attempt to give it."
Monsieur Origet pressed my hand with a gesture of respect.
"Courage, monsieur," he said, lifting his eyes to heaven.
The words expressed his compassion for sufferings he thought shared;
he little suspected the poisoned arrow which they shot into my heart.
I sprang into the carriage and ordered the postilion to drive on,
promising a good reward if I arrived in time.
Notwithstanding my impatience I seemed to do the distance in a few
minutes, so absorbed was I in the bitter reflections that crowded upon
my soul. Dying of grief, yet her children were well? then she died
The Lily of the Valley |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Confidence by Henry James: state of mind and appealing to his sense of propriety.
Nothing could be more natural than that Mrs. Vivian should suppose
that Bernard desired his friend's success; for, as our thoughtful
hero said to himself, what she had hitherto taken it into her
head to fear was not that Bernard should fall in love with
her daughter, but that her daughter should fall in love with him.
Watering-place life is notoriously conducive to idleness of mind,
and Bernard strolled for half an hour along the overarched avenue,
glancing alternately at these two insupposable cases.
A few days afterward, late in the evening, Gordon Wright came
to his room at the hotel.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: agitated, gave out sparks, but a small portion in a watch-
glass scarcely ever was luminous. Ehrenberg states that
these particles all retain a certain degree of irritability. My
observations, some of which were made directly after taking
up the water, gave a different result. I may also mention,
that having used the net during one night, I allowed it to
become partially dry, and having occasion twelve hours
afterwards to employ it again, I found the whole surface
sparkled as brightly as when first taken out of the water.
It does not appear probable in this case, that the particles
could have remained so long alive. On one occasion having
The Voyage of the Beagle |
