| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Simple Soul by Gustave Flaubert: and uttering groans of agony. The Mother Superior was standing on the
right side of the bed. The three candles on the bureau made red blurs,
and the windows were dimmed by the fog outside. The nuns carried
Madame Aubain from the room.
For two nights, Felicite never left the corpse. She would repeat the
same prayers, sprinkle holy water over the sheets, get up, come back
to the bed and contemplate the body. At the end of the first vigil,
she noticed that the face had taken on a yellow tinge, the lips grew
blue, the nose grew pinched, the eyes were sunken. She kissed them
several times and would not have been greatly astonished had Virginia
opened them; to souls like this the supernatural is always quite
A Simple Soul |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: `sentiment, are not understood in a place like this.
The noblest qualities are ridiculed. Grinning college boys,
ignorant and conceited, what do they know of delicacy!'
I controlled my features and tried to speak seriously.
`If you mean me, Mr. Ordinsky, I have known Miss Lingard a long time,
and I think I appreciate her kindness. We come from the same town,
and we grew up together.'
His gaze travelled slowly down from the ceiling and rested on me.
`Am I to understand that you have this young woman's interests at heart?
That you do not wish to compromise her?'
`That's a word we don't use much here, Mr. Ordinsky. A girl who makes
My Antonia |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: thing, but it's an occasion really for doing so. You HAVEN'T seen
it? Then you must. The man has actually got AT you, at what I
always feel, you know." Lady Jane threw into her eyes a look
evidently intended to give an idea of what she always felt; but she
added that she couldn't have expressed it. The man in the paper
expressed it in a striking manner. "Just see there, and there,
where I've dashed it, how he brings it out." She had literally
marked for him the brightest patches of my prose, and if I was a
little amused Vereker himself may well have been. He showed how
much he was when before us all Lady Jane wanted to read something
aloud. I liked at any rate the way he defeated her purpose by
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