| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: natural is the disjointed babble of the chronicler; but which
attains the highest degree of elegant and pregnant
implication unobtrusively; or if obtrusively, then with the
greatest gain to sense and vigour. Even the derangement of
the phrases from their (so-called) natural order is luminous
for the mind; and it is by the means of such designed
reversal that the elements of a judgment may be most
pertinently marshalled, or the stages of a complicated action
most perspicuously bound into one.
The web, then, or the pattern: a web at once sensuous and
logical, an elegant and pregnant texture: that is style,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Eve and David by Honore de Balzac: be laid for David. Kolb told the servant who opened the door that he
wanted to speak to M. Doublon on business. The servant was busy
washing up her plates and dishes, and not very well pleased at Kolb's
interruption; she pushed open the door of the outer office, and bade
him wait there till her master was at liberty; then, as he was a
stranger to her, she told the master in the private office that "a
man" wanted to speak to him. Now, "a man" so invariably means "a
peasant," that Doublon said, "Tell him to wait," and Kolb took a seat
close to the door of the private office. There were voices talking
within.
"Ah, by the by, how do you mean to set about it? For, if we can catch
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Pupil by Henry James: appeal for a suggestion as to whom they might get to take Amy.
"Let the Devil take her!" Ulick snapped; so that Pemberton could
see that they had not only lost their amiability but had ceased to
believe in themselves. He could also see that if Mrs. Moreen was
trying to get people to take her children she might be regarded as
closing the hatches for the storm. But Morgan would be the last
she would part with.
One winter afternoon - it was a Sunday - he and the boy walked far
together in the Bois de Boulogne. The evening was so splendid, the
cold lemon-coloured sunset so clear, the stream of carriages and
pedestrians so amusing and the fascination of Paris so great, that
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