| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini: the excess of your prudery. You have been brought up like a little
bourgeoise, I think. Yes, that is it - a little bourgeoise.
Quintin was always something of a shopkeeper at heart."
"I was asking your opinion on the conduct of M. de La Tour d'Azyr,
madame. Not on my own."
"But it is an indelicacy in you to observe such things. You should
be ignorant of them, and I can't think who is so... so unfeeling as
to inform you. But since you are informed, at least you should be
modestly blind to things that take place outside the... orbit of a
properly conducted demoiselle."
"Will they still be outside my orbit when I am married?"
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from End of the Tether by Joseph Conrad: a doleful, burly, very yellow Chinaman, resembling Mr.
Massy, waited apathetically with the cloth over his arm
and a pile of thick dinner-plates against his chest. A
common cabin lamp with its globe missing, brought up
from below, had been hooked to the wooden framework
of the awning; the side-screens had been lowered all
round; Captain Whalley filling the depths of the wicker-
chair seemed to sit benumbed in a canvas tent crudely
lighted, and used for the storing of nautical objects; a
shabby steering-wheel, a battered brass binnacle on a
stout mahogany stand, two dingy life-buoys, an old cork
End of the Tether |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe: besides the Saxon kings mentioned above, and besides several of the
most eminent bishops of the See. Just under the altar lies a son
of William the Conqueror, without any monument; and behind the
altar, under a very fine and venerable monument, lies the famous
Lord Treasurer Weston, late Earl of Portland, Lord High Treasurer
of England under King Charles I. His effigy is in copper armour at
full-length, with his head raised on three cushions of the same,
and is a very magnificent work. There is also a very fine monument
of Cardinal Beaufort in his cardinal's robes and hat.
The monument of Sir John Cloberry is extraordinary, but more
because it puts strangers upon inquiring into his story than for
|
