| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Wheels of Chance by H. G. Wells: our modest but truthful pages,--we leave the eager little group
in the bar of the Vicuna Hotel, we leave all Bognor as we have
left all Chichester and Midhurst and Haslemere and Guildford and
Ripley and Putney, and follow this dear fool of a Hoopdriver of
ours and his Young Lady in Grey out upon the moonlight road. How
they rode! How their hearts beat together and their breath came
fast, and how every shadow was anticipation and every noise
pursuit! For all that flight Mr. Hoopdriver was in the world of
Romance. Had a policeman intervened because their lamps were not
lit, Hoopdriver had cut him down and ridden on, after the fashion
of a hero born. Had Bechamel arisen in the way with rapiers for a
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes: had committed the treachery of slaying his king; and therefore he
defied them all, and the vengeance and the reply concerned all;
though, to be sure, Senor Don Diego went rather too far, indeed very
much beyond the limits of a defiance; for he had no occasion to defy
the dead, or the waters, or the fishes, or those yet unborn, and all
the rest of it as set forth; but let that pass, for when anger
breaks out there's no father, governor, or bridle to check the tongue.
The case being, then, that no one person can insult a kingdom,
province, city, state, or entire community, it is clear there is no
reason for going out to avenge the defiance of such an insult,
inasmuch as it is not one. A fine thing it would be if the people of
Don Quixote |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Purse by Honore de Balzac: but which corroborated his frightful suspicions, and which, by
proving the certainty of this last incident, opened his eyes as
to the character and life of these two women.
Had they really waited till the portrait was given them before
robbing him of his purse? In such a combination the theft was
even more odious. The painter recollected that for the last two
or three evenings Adelaide, while seeming to examine with a
girl's curiosity the particular stitch of the worn silk netting,
was probably counting the coins in the purse, while making some
light jests, quite innocent in appearance, but no doubt with the
object of watching for a moment when the sum was worth stealing.
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