| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: houses that seemed immense. There was a steam-
machine that went on the water, and they all stood
upon it packed tight, only now there were with
them many women and children who made much
noise. A cold rain fell, the wind blew in his face;
he was wet through, and his teeth chattered. He
and the young man from the same valley took each
other by the hand.
"They thought they were being taken to Amer-
ica straight away, but suddenly the steam-machine
bumped against the side of a thing like a house on
Amy Foster |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An International Episode by Henry James: upon the subject of his good looks. She was perfectly conscious,
moreover, that she liked to think of his more adventitious merits;
that her imagination was excited and gratified by the sight
of a handsome young man endowed with such large opportunities--
opportunities she hardly knew for what, but, as she supposed,
for doing great things--for setting an example, for exerting
an influence, for conferring happiness, for encouraging the arts.
She had a kind of ideal of conduct for a young man who should find
himself in this magnificent position, and she tried to adapt
it to Lord Lambeth's deportment as you might attempt to fit
a silhouette in cut paper upon a shadow projected upon a wall.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: not to show herself to the admiration of the passers-by and see them
turn to gaze at her, but to be able to look out on the Boulevard at
the bottom of the Rue Taitbout. This side view, really very comparable
to the peephole made by actors in the drop-scene of a theatre, enabled
her to catch a glimpse of numbers of elegant carriages, and a crowd of
persons, swept past with the rapidity of /Ombres Chinoises/. Not
knowing whether Roger would arrive in a carriage or on foot, the
needlewoman from the Rue du Tourniquet looked by turns at the foot-
passengers, and at the tilburies--light cabs introduced into Paris by
the English.
Expressions of refractoriness and of love passed by turns over her
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