| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith: MARLOW. That is, you act as the bar-maid of this inn.
MISS HARDCASTLE. Inn! O law----what brought that in your head? One
of the best families in the country keep an inn--Ha! ha! ha! old Mr.
Hardcastle's house an inn!
MARLOW. Mr. Hardcastle's house! Is this Mr. Hardcastle's house,
child?
MISS HARDCASTLE. Ay, sure! Whose else should it be?
MARLOW. So then, all's out, and I have been damnably imposed on. O,
confound my stupid head, I shall be laughed at over the whole town. I
shall be stuck up in caricatura in all the print-shops. The DULLISSIMO
MACCARONI. To mistake this house of all others for an inn, and my
She Stoops to Conquer |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: steps to take to get into it is more than I have yet been able to discover.
You hide away mighty well so long as I am on the premises, I know;
but I had a hope that you peeped out a little at other times.
You and your poor aunt are worse off than Carmelite nuns in their cells.
Should you mind telling me how you exist without air, without exercise,
without any sort of human contact? I don't see how you carry on the common
business of life."
She looked at me as if I were talking some strange tongue, and her
answer was so little of an answer that I was considerably irritated.
"We go to bed very early--earlier than you would believe."
I was on the point of saying that this only deepened the mystery when she
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: tricks of work-manship and schemes of composition (all being
admirably good, or they would long have been forgotten) haunt
and tempt our fancy, offer us ready-made but not perfectly
appropriate solutions for any problem that arises, and wean
us from the study of nature and the uncompromising practice
of art. To struggle, to face nature, to find fresh
solutions, and give expression to facts which have not yet
been adequately or not yet elegantly expressed, is to run a
little upon the danger of extreme self-love. Difficulty sets
a high price upon achievement; and the artist may easily fall
into the error of the French naturalists, and consider any
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