| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James: were for everybody, and it might be drearily unavailing for any
poor particular body to be overworked and unusual. What he did
take for granted was all sorts of facility; and his high
pleasantness, his relighting of cigarettes while he waited, his
unconscious bestowal of opportunities, of boons, of blessings, were
all a part of his splendid security, the instinct that told him
there was nothing such an existence as his could ever lose by. He
was somehow all at once very bright and very grave, very young and
immensely complete; and whatever he was at any moment it was always
as much as all the rest the mere bloom of his beatitude. He was
sometimes Everard, as he had been at the Hotel Brighton, and he was
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: do wrong together, I can overlook a great deal."
"They cannot have been sitting long," cried Mrs. Grant,
"for when I went up for my shawl I saw them from the
staircase window, and then they were walking."
"And really," added Edmund, "the day is so mild,
that your sitting down for a few minutes can be hardly
thought imprudent. Our weather must not always be judged
by the calendar. We may sometimes take greater liberties
in November than in May."
"Upon my word," cried Miss Crawford, "you are two of the most
disappointing and unfeeling kind friends I ever met with!
Mansfield Park |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy: of a small star-shaped flower. Above it I read two lines, everything
else was scorched and blackened by the flame."
"And what were the two lines?"
Her throat seemed suddenly to have contracted. For an instant
she felt that she could not speak the words, which might send a brave
man to his death.
"It is lucky that the whole paper was not burned," added
Chauvelin, with dry sarcasm, "for it might have fared ill with Armand
St. Just. What were the two lines citoyenne?"
"One was, `I start myself to-morrow,'" she said quietly, "the
other--'If you wish to speak to me, I shall be in the supper-room at
The Scarlet Pimpernel |
