| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The American by Henry James: dropped along the hill to inclose the clustered houses defensively,
had been absorbed into the very substance of the village.
The church was simply the former chapel of the castle, fronting upon
its grass-grown court, which, however, was of generous enough width
to have given up its quaintest corner to a little graveyard.
Here the very headstones themselves seemed to sleep, as they
slanted into the grass; the patient elbow of the rampart held
them together on one side, and in front, far beneath their
mossy lids, the green plains and blue distances stretched away.
The way to church, up the hill, was impracticable to vehicles.
It was lined with peasants, two or three rows deep, who stood
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: thereabouts, the wearer of a black wig and dyed whiskers, who
gave out that he was a retired merchant, and was addressed as M.
Vautrin. Two of the four rooms on the third floor were also let--
one to an elderly spinster, a Mlle. Michonneau, and the other to
a retired manufacturer of vermicelli, Italian paste and starch,
who allowed the others to address him as "Father Goriot." The
remaining rooms were allotted to various birds of passage, to
impecunious students, who like "Father Goriot" and Mlle.
Michonneau, could only muster forty-five francs a month to pay
for their board and lodging. Mme. Vauquer had little desire for
lodgers of this sort; they ate too much bread, and she only took
Father Goriot |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: ambiguous as the sonnets--scarcely more divine, I think--
of Shakespeare) had taken for granted that Juliana had
not always adhered to the steep footway of renunciation.
There hovered about her name a perfume of reckless passion,
an intimation that she had not been exactly as the respectable
young person in general. Was this a sign that her singer had
betrayed her, had given her away, as we say nowadays, to posterity?
Certain it is that it would have been difficult to put one's finger
on the passage in which her fair fame suffered an imputation.
Moreover was not any fame fair enough that was so sure of duration
and was associated with works immortal through their beauty?
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