| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: purblind, spiteful versions. There is a precise realism and an
unsmiling, measured, determined sincerity which gives a strange
dignity to the work of one whose fixed practice and ungovernable
impulse it is to kick conventional dignity whenever he sees it.
Harris "durch Mitleid wissend"
Frank Harris is everything except a humorist, not, apparently, from
stupidity, but because scorn overcomes humor in him. Nobody ever
dreamt of reproaching Milton's Lucifer for not seeing the comic side
of his fall; and nobody who has read Mr Harris's stories desires to
have them lightened by chapters from the hand of Artemus Ward. Yet he
knows the taste and the value of humor. He was one of the few men of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson: This was the first time I had heard him refer to the Master even
distantly; and I think he found his tongue rebellious even for that
much, but presently he resumed - "This is why I would have nothing
said. It would give pain to Mrs. Henry . . . and to my father," he
added, with another flush.
"Mr. Henry," said I, "if you will take a freedom at my hands, I
would tell you to let that woman be. What service is your money to
the like of her? She has no sobriety and no economy - as for
gratitude, you will as soon get milk from a whinstone; and if you
will pretermit your bounty, it will make no change at all but just
to save the ankles of your messengers."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: charm of my small charge--as so many things thrown in.
It was thrown in as well, from the first moment, that I
should get on with Mrs. Grose in a relation over which,
on my way, in the coach, I fear I had rather brooded.
The only thing indeed that in this early outlook might have
made me shrink again was the clear circumstance of her being
so glad to see me. I perceived within half an hour that she
was so glad--stout, simple, plain, clean, wholesome woman--
as to be positively on her guard against showing it too much.
I wondered even then a little why she should wish not to show it,
and that, with reflection, with suspicion, might of course
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