| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: sharp enough for one of that sort." There were yet other
solutions; Father Goriot was a skinflint, a shark of a money-
lender, a man who lived by selling lottery tickets. He was by
turns all the most mysterious brood of vice and shame and misery;
yet, however vile his life might be, the feeling of repulsion
which he aroused in others was not so strong that he must be
banished from their society--he paid his way. Besides, Goriot had
his uses, every one vented his spleen or sharpened his wit on
him; he was pelted with jokes and belabored with hard words. The
general consensus of opinion was in favor of a theory which
seemed the most likely; this was Mme. Vauquer's view. According
Father Goriot |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: verses of which Cumnor and I had after infinite conjecture
established solidly enough the date--that she was even then,
as a girl of twenty, on the foreign side of the sea.
There was an implication in the poem (I hope not just for the phrase)
that he had come back for her sake. We had no real light upon her
circumstances at that moment, any more than we had upon her origin,
which we believed to be of the sort usually spoken of as modest.
Cumnor had a theory that she had been a governess in some family
in which the poet visited and that, in consequence of her position,
there was from the first something unavowed, or rather something
positively clandestine, in their relations. I on the other hand
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells: possessed her. She felt draggled and insulted beyond redemption.
She could not hide her face. She attempted by a sheer act of
will to end the scene, to will herself out of it anywhere. She
had a horrible glimpse of the once nice little old lady being
also borne stationward, still faintly battling and very
muddy--one lock of grayish hair straggling over her neck, her
face scared, white, but triumphant. Her bonnet dropped off and
was trampled into the gutter. A little Cockney recovered it, and
made ridiculous attempts to get to her and replace it.
"You must arrest me!" she gasped, breathlessly, insisting
insanely on a point already carried; "you shall!"
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