| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton: Evelina, without a word, bent over the fire, stretching her
thin hands to the blaze and watching Ann Eliza fill the kettle and
set the supper table. Her gaze had the dreamy fixity of a half-
awakened child's.
Ann Eliza, with a smile of triumph, brought a slice of custard
pie from the cupboard and put it by her sister's plate.
"You do like that, don't you? Miss Mellins sent it down to me
this morning. She had her aunt from Brooklyn to dinner. Ain't it
funny it just so happened?"
"I ain't hungry," said Evelina, rising to approach the table.
She sat down in her usual place, looked about her with the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: No more mysteries! all is over for the husband; no more painting or
decoration for him. The corset--half the time it is a corset of a
reparative kind--lies where it is thrown, if the maid is too sleepy to
take it away with her. The whalebone bustle, the oiled-silk
protections round the sleeves, the pads, the hair bought from a
coiffeur, all the false woman is there, scattered about in open sight.
/Disjecta membra poetae/, the artificial poesy, so much admired by
those for whom it is conceived and elaborated, the fragments of a
pretty woman, litter every corner of the room. To the love of a
yawning husband, the actual presents herself, also yawning, in a
dishabille without elegance, and a tumbled night-cap, that of last
Ferragus |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: her to be the only face which I did not see--and have not seen her
yet, either."
"So I thought, dear lad," said Frank, with one of his sweetest
smiles; "and tried to get her father to let her impersonate the
nymph of Torridge."
"Did you, you dear kind fellow? That would have been too
delicious."
"Just so, too delicious; wherefore, I suppose, it was ordained not
to be, that which was being delicious enough."
"And is she as pretty as ever?"
"Ten times as pretty, dear lad, as half the young fellows round
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