| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: own weight and as if moreover, for that matter, Marcher had been
visited by one of his occasional warnings against egotism. He had
kept up, he felt, and very decently on the whole, his consciousness
of the importance of not being selfish, and it was true that he had
never sinned in that direction without promptly enough trying to
press the scales the other way. He often repaired his fault, the
season permitting, by inviting his friend to accompany him to the
opera; and it not infrequently thus happened that, to show he
didn't wish her to have but one sort of food for her mind, he was
the cause of her appearing there with him a dozen nights in the
month. It even happened that, seeing her home at such times, he
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith: to be very good company. I believe our being here will but embarrass
the interview.
MARLOW. Not in the least, Mr. Hastings. We like your company of all
things. (To him.) Zounds! George, sure you won't go? how can you
leave us?
HASTINGS. Our presence will but spoil conversation, so we'll retire to
the next room. (To him.) You don't consider, man, that we are to
manage a little tete-a-tete of our own. [Exeunt.]
MISS HARDCASTLE. (after a pause). But you have not been wholly an
observer, I presume, sir: the ladies, I should hope, have employed some
part of your addresses.
She Stoops to Conquer |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from One Basket by Edna Ferber: the two sisters, Flora the beautiful and Sophy the plain. It was
more than a mere physical change. It was a spiritual thing,
though neither knew nor marked it. Each had taken on weight, the
one, solidly, comfortably; the other, flabbily, unhealthily.
With the encroaching fat, Flora's small, delicate features
seemed, somehow, to disappear in her face, so that you saw it as
a large white surface bearing indentations, ridges, and hollows
like one of those enlarged photographs of the moon's surface as
seen through a telescope. A self-centered face, and misleadingly
placid. Aunt Sophy's large, plain features, plumply padded now,
impressed you as indicating strength, courage, and a great human
One Basket |
