| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: crude and my distinctions pitiful. "Good-night, my dear boy -
don't bother about it. After all, you do like a fellow."
"And a little intelligence might spoil it?" I still detained him.
He hesitated. "Well, you've got a heart in your body. Is that an
element of form or an element of feeling? What I contend that
nobody has ever mentioned in my work is the organ of life."
"I see - it's some idea ABOUT life, some sort of philosophy.
Unless it be," I added with the eagerness of a thought perhaps
still happier, "some kind of game you're up to with your style,
something you're after in the language. Perhaps it's a preference
for the letter P!" I ventured profanely to break out. "Papa,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: clerk in the Treasury.
Besides such information as this, Rabourdin's memorandum contained an
inquiry into the moral and physical capacities and faculties necessary
in those who were to examine the intelligence, aptitude for labor, and
sound health of the applicants for government service,--three
indispensable qualities in men who are to bear the burden of public
affairs and should do their business well and quickly. But this
careful study, the result of ten years' observation and experience,
and of a long acquaintance with men and things obtained by intercourse
with the various functionaries in the different ministries, would
assuredly have, to those who did not see its purport and connection,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Breaking Point by Mary Roberts Rinehart: A. "No. I had examined the woodbox. I had a theory that - "
Q. "The Jury cannot listen to any theories. This is an inquiry
into facts."
"I'm going to find Melis," the reporter said thoughtfully, as he
folded up the papers. "The fact is, I mailed an advertisement to
the New York papers to-day. I want to get that theory of his. It's
the servants in the house who know what is going on. I've got an
idea that he'd stumbled onto something. He'd searched for the
revolver, and it wasn't there. He went back and it was. All that
conflicting evidence, and against it, what? That you'd run away !"
But he saw that Dick was very tired, and even a little indifferent.
The Breaking Point |
