| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Pierre Grassou by Honore de Balzac: artist received them with smiles. The rascal had shaved and put on
clean linen; he had also arranged his hair in a pleasing manner, and
chosen a very becoming pair of trousers and red leather slippers with
pointed toes. The family replied with smiles as flattering as those of
the artist. Virginie became the color of her hair, lowered her eyes,
and turned aside her head to look at the sketches. Pierre Grassou
thought these little affectations charming, Virginie had such grace;
happily she didn't look like her father or her mother; but whom did
she look like?
During this sitting there were little skirmishes between the family
and the painter, who had the audacity to call pere Vervelle witty.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: "He is not much a man of the world," she said. "If it had not been for
the Abbe Chapeloud he would never have been received at Madame de
Listomere's. Oh, what didn't I lose in losing the Abbe Chapeloud! Such
an amiable man, and so easy to live with! In twelve whole years I
never had the slightest difficulty or disagreement with him."
Presented thus, the innocent abbe was considered by this bourgeois
society, which secretly hated the aristocratic society, as a man
essentially exacting and hard to get along with. For a week
Mademoiselle Gamard enjoyed the pleasure of being pitied by friends
who, without really thinking one word of what they said, kept
repeating to her: "How COULD he have turned against you?--so kind and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Silas Marner by George Eliot: dairy."
"Ah, Priscilla," said Nancy, returning the pressure with a
grateful glance of her clear eyes, "but it won't make up to
Godfrey: a dairy's not so much to a man. And it's only what he
cares for that ever makes me low. I'm contented with the blessings
we have, if he could be contented."
"It drives me past patience," said Priscilla, impetuously, "that
way o' the men--always wanting and wanting, and never easy with
what they've got: they can't sit comfortable in their chairs when
they've neither ache nor pain, but either they must stick a pipe in
their mouths, to make 'em better than well, or else they must be
Silas Marner |
