| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: hands; the votes are counted, the candidates estimate their chances,
and clever men can prophesy their failure or success. It is a decent
hustings, without the mob, but formidable; agitation, though it is not
allowed any physical display, as it is in England, is not the less
profound. The English fight these battles with their fists, the French
with hard words. Our neighbors have a scrimmage, the French try their
fate by cold combinations calmly worked out. This particular political
business is carried out in opposition to the character of the two
nations.
The Radical party named their candidate; Monsieur de Chavoncourt came
forward; then Albert appeared, and was accused by the Chavoncourt
Albert Savarus |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The American by Henry James: at variance with the ascetic institution, and the impression made upon
Newman's gloomily-irritated gaze by the fresh-looking, windowless expanse
behind which the woman he loved was perhaps even then pledging herself
to pass the rest of her days was less exasperating than he had feared.
The place suggested a convent with the modern improvements--an asylum in
which privacy, though unbroken, might be not quite identical with privation,
and meditation, though monotonous, might be of a cheerful cast. And yet
he knew the case was otherwise; only at present it was not a reality to him.
It was too strange and too mocking to be real; it was like a page torn
out of a romance, with no context in his own experience.
On Sunday morning, at the hour which Mrs. Tristram had indicated,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence: itself, warm and full.
'It's amazing,' said Connie, 'how different one feels when there's a
really fresh fine day. Usually one feels the very air is half dead.
People are killing the very air.'
'Do you think people are doing it?' he asked.
'I do. The steam of so much boredom, and discontent and anger out of
all the people, just kills the vitality in the air. I'm sure of it.'
'Perhaps some condition of the atmosphere lowers the vitality of the
people?' he said.
'No, it's man that poisons the universe,' she asserted.
'Fouls his own nest,' remarked Clifford.
Lady Chatterley's Lover |
