| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: the peasant, and the peasant failing to understand the barin, and both
becoming disaffected. In the end, these difficulties so chilled
Tientietnikov's enthusiasm that he took to supervising the labours of
the field with greatly diminished attention. That is to say, no matter
whether the scythes were softly swishing through the grass, or ricks
were being built, or rafts were being loaded, he would allow his eyes
to wander from his men, and to fall to gazing at, say, a red-billed,
red-legged heron which, after strutting along the bank of a stream,
would have caught a fish in its beak, and be holding it awhile, as
though in doubt whether to swallow it. Next he would glance towards
the spot where a similar bird, but one not yet in possession of a
Dead Souls |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle: pencil of Howard Pyle.
Pyle, artist-author, living in the latter half of the nineteenth
century and the first decade of the twentieth, had the fine
faculty of transposing himself into any chosen period of history
and making its people flesh and blood again--not just historical
puppets. His characters were sketched with both words and
picture; with both words and picture he ranks as a master, with a
rich personality which makes his work individual and attractive
in either medium.
He was one of the founders of present-day American illustration,
and his pupils and grand-pupils pervade that field to-day. While
Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The American by Henry James: for him by Tom Tristram, in accordance with the latter's estimate
of what he called his social position. When Newman learned that his
social position was to be taken into account, he professed himself
utterly incompetent, and begged Tristram to relieve him of the care.
"I didn't know I had a social position," he said, "and if I have,
I haven't the smallest idea what it is. Isn't a social position
knowing some two or three thousand people and inviting them to dinner?
I know you and your wife and little old Mr. Nioche, who gave me French
lessons last spring. Can I invite you to dinner to meet each other?
If I can, you must come to-morrow."
"That is not very grateful to me," said Mrs. Tristram,
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