| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton: then you told me all about her."
Glennard had turned back into the room and stood staring at his
wife. "All about her?" he repeated, and with the words
remembrance came to him. He had found Miss Trent one afternoon
with the novel in her hand, and moved by the lover's fatuous
impulse to associate himself in some way with whatever fills the
mind of the beloved, had broken through his habitual silence about
the past. Rewarded by the consciousness of figuring impressively
in Miss Trent's imagination he had gone on from one anecdote to
another, reviving dormant details of his old Hillbridge life, and
pasturing his vanity on the eagerness with which she received his
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: seat, leaving the saddle horse at La Baudraye.
"You have changed your gown," said Gatien, blunderingly, to Dinah.
"Madame la Baronne was chilled by the cool air off the river," replied
Lousteau. "Bianchon advised her to put on a warm dress."
Dinah turned as red as a poppy, and Madame Piedefer assumed a stern
expression.
"Poor Bianchon! he is on the road to Paris. A noble soul!" said
Lousteau.
"Oh, yes!" cried Madame de la Baudraye, "he is high-minded, full of
delicate feeling----"
"We were in such good spirits when we set out," said Lousteau; "now
The Muse of the Department |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: temperance is good as well as noble, and Homer has declared that 'modesty
is not good for a needy man.' (3) Once more Charmides makes the attempt.
This time he gives a definition which he has heard, and of which Socrates
conjectures that Critias must be the author: 'Temperance is doing one's
own business.' But the artisan who makes another man's shoes may be
temperate, and yet he is not doing his own business; and temperance defined
thus would be opposed to the division of labour which exists in every
temperate or well-ordered state. How is this riddle to be explained?
Critias, who takes the place of Charmides, distinguishes in his answer
between 'making' and 'doing,' and with the help of a misapplied quotation
from Hesiod assigns to the words 'doing' and 'work' an exclusively good
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