| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: you at your new home, you know, so that my absence now
will not matter."
"Then I give in. Do whatever will be most comfortable
to yourself."
Clym retired to his lodging at the housetop much relieved,
and occupied himself during the afternoon in noting
down the heads of a sermon, with which he intended to
initiate all that really seemed practicable of the scheme
that had originally brought him hither, and that he
had so long kept in view under various modifications,
and through evil and good report. He had tested and weighed
Return of the Native |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: the Venus of Pere-Lachaise," replied Vautrin.
"There's Poiret," suggested Bianchon.
"Oh! Poiret shall pose as Poiret. He can be a garden god!" cried
Vautrin; "his name means a pear----"
"A sleepy pear!" Bianchon put in. "You will come in between the
pear and the cheese."
"What stuff are you all talking!" said Mme. Vauquer; "you would
do better to treat us to your Bordeaux; I see a glimpse of a
bottle there. It would keep us all in a good humor, and it is
good for the stomach besides."
"Gentlemen," said Vautrin, "the Lady President calls us to order.
Father Goriot |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair: centered upon it, and fingers flying so fast that the sounds of the
bits of steel striking upon each other was like the music of an
express train as one hears it in a sleeping car at night. This was
"piece-work," of course; and besides it was made certain that the boy
did not idle, by setting the machine to match the highest possible
speed of human hands. Thirty thousand of these pieces he handled
every day, nine or ten million every year--how many in a lifetime
it rested with the gods to say. Near by him men sat bending over
whirling grindstones, putting the finishing touches to the steel
knives of the reaper; picking them out of a basket with the right
hand, pressing first one side and then the other against the stone
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