| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy: the spectacle, at six o'clock on this midsummer afternoon, in a
melon-frame atmosphere and beneath a violet sky. The Swancourt
equipage formed one in the stream.
Mrs. Swancourt was a talker of talk of the incisive kind, which
her low musical voice--the only beautiful point in the old woman--
prevented from being wearisome.
'Now,' she said to Elfride, who, like AEneas at Carthage, was full
of admiration for the brilliant scene, 'you will find that our
companionless state will give us, as it does everybody, an
extraordinary power in reading the features of our fellow-
creatures here. I always am a listener in such places as these--
A Pair of Blue Eyes |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: there was the door to ye! He had that zeal for the Lord, it was a fair
wonder to hear him pray, but the family has aye had a gift that way."
This father was twice married, once to a dark woman of the old Ellwald
stock, by whom he had Gilbert, presently of Cauldstaneslap; and,
secondly, to the mother of Kirstie. "He was an auld man when he married
her, a fell auld man wi' a muckle voice - you could hear him rowting
from the top o' the Kye-skairs," she said; "but for her, it appears she
was a perfit wonder. It was gentle blood she had, Mr. Archie, for it
was your ain. The country-side gaed gyte about her and her gowden hair.
Mines is no to be mentioned wi' it, and there's few weemen has mair hair
than what I have, or yet a bonnier colour. Often would I tell my dear
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela: and confided his troubles to Demetrio. The soldiers had
cleaned him out; they had not left a single grain of corn.
"Why did you let them?" Demetrio asked indolently.
The man persisted, lamenting and weeping. Luis Cer-
vantes was about to throw him out with an insult. But
Camilla intervened.
"Come on, Demetrio, don't be harsh, give him an order
to get his corn back."
Luis Cervantes was obliged to obey; he scrawled a few
lines to which Demetrio appended an illegible scratch.
"May God repay you, my child! God will lead you to
The Underdogs |
