| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Twelve Stories and a Dream by H. G. Wells: stories, not realising the trouble this would mean for me in the end.
The truth I dare not tell. I have consulted a number of law-books
in the British Museum, and there is not the slightest doubt that
I have connived at and abetted and aided a felony. That scoundrel
Bingham was the Hithergate bank manager, I find, and guilty of
the most flagrant embezzlement. Please, please burn this letter
when read--I trust you implicitly. The worst of it is, neither my aunt
nor her friend who kept the boarding-house at which I was staying
seem altogether to believe a guarded statement I have made them
practically of what actually happened. They suspect me of some
discreditable adventure, but what sort of discreditable adventure
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: many diverse sentiments have passed before him on biers; he has seen
so many tears, true and false; he has beheld sorrow under so many
aspects and on so many faces; he has heard such endless thousands of
eternal woes,--that to him sorrow has come to be nothing more than a
stone an inch thick, four feet long, and twenty-four inches wide. As
for regrets, they are the annoyances of his office; he neither
breakfasts nor dines without first wiping off the rain of an
inconsolable affliction. He is kind and tender to other feelings; he
will weep over a stage-hero, over Monsieur Germeuil in the "Auberge
des Adrets," the man with the butter-colored breeches, murdered by
Macaire; but his heart is ossified in the matter of real dead men.
Ferragus |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith: bring us the bill of fare for to-night's supper: I believe it's drawn
out--Your manner, Mr. Hastings, puts me in mind of my uncle, Colonel
Wallop. It was a saying of his, that no man was sure of his supper
till he had eaten it.
HASTINGS. (Aside.) All upon the high rope! His uncle a colonel! we
shall soon hear of his mother being a justice of the peace. But let's
hear the bill of fare.
MARLOW. (Perusing.) What's here? For the first course; for the
second course; for the dessert. The devil, sir, do you think we have
brought down a whole Joiners' Company, or the corporation of Bedford,
to eat up such a supper? Two or three little things, clean and
She Stoops to Conquer |
