| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Beauty and The Beast by Bayard Taylor: explain why--a different experience. Dress and speech, in him,
expressed condescension rather than fraternal equality.
He carefully assisted his wife to alight, and De Courcy led the
horse to the hitching-shed. Susan Donnelly was a still blooming
woman of forty; her dress, of the plainest color, was yet of the
richest texture; and her round, gentle, almost timid face looked
forth like a girl's from the shadow of her scoop bonnet. While she
was greeting Abraham Bradbury, the two daughters, Sylvia and Alice,
who had been standing shyly by themselves on the edge of the group
of women, came forward. The latter was a model of the demure
Quaker maiden; but Abraham experienced as much surprise as was
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: little white damsel--drooping, drooping, drooping, more and more
out of the frosty air, and into his comfortable parlor. A
Heidenberg stove, filled to the brim with intensely burning
anthracite, was sending a bright gleam through the isinglass of
its iron door, and causing the vase of water on its top to fume
and bubble with excitement. A warm, sultry smell was diffused
throughout the room. A thermometer on the wall farthest from the
stove stood at eighty degrees. The parlor was hung with red
curtains, and covered with a red carpet, and looked just as warm
as it felt. The difference betwixt the atmosphere here and the
cold, wintry twilight out of doors, was like stepping at once
The Snow Image |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: We roll in soundless depths, where our minds will not always sustain
us. Ah, surely a great and powerful intellect is needed to bring us
back, safe and sound, to our own social beliefs.
"Swedenborg," resumed the pastor, "was particularly attached to the
Baron de Seraphitz, whose name, according to an old Swedish custom,
had taken from time immemorial the Latin termination of 'us.' The
baron was an ardent disciple of the Swedish prophet, who had opened
the eyes of his Inner-Man and brought him to a life in conformity with
the decrees from On-High. He sought for an Angelic Spirit among women;
Swedenborg found her for him in a vision. His bride was the daughter
of a London shoemaker, in whom, said Swedenborg, the life of Heaven
Seraphita |
