| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: tell him to go and leave me alone, and the caprice, however wounding
to him, would be obeyed without a murmur. His last breath was spent in
blessing me and in repeating that a single morning alone with me was
more precious to him than a lifetime spent with another woman, were
she even the Marie of his youth. My tears fall as I write the words.
This is the manner of my life now. I rise at midday and go to bed at
seven; I linger absurdly long over meals; I saunter about slowly,
standing motionless, an hour at a time, before a single plant; I gaze
into the leafy trees; I take a sober and serious interest in mere
nothings; I long for shade, silence, and night; in a word, I fight
through each hour as it comes, and take a gloomy pleasure in adding it
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: of the last four-and-twenty hours.
He listened in the passage, and could hear hard stertorous breathing.
Then he walked out in the garden, and looked at the early rime on
the grass and fresh spring leaves. When he re-entered the house,
he felt startled at the sight of Mrs. Abel.
"How is your patient--asleep, I think?" he said, with an attempt
at cheerfulness in his tone.
"He's gone very deep, sir," said Mrs. Abel. "He went off gradual
between three and four o'clock. Would you please to go and look
at him? I thought it no harm to leave him. My man's gone afield,
and the little girl's seeing to the kettles."
Middlemarch |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: years old, is no saleable commodity, and even when they come to
this age, they will not yield above three pounds, or three pounds
and half a crown at most, on the exchange; which cannot turn to
account either to the parents or kingdom, the charge of
nutriments and rags having been at least four times that value.
I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I
hope will not be liable to the least objection.
I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance
in London, that a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year
old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether
stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it
A Modest Proposal |
