| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Under the Red Robe by Stanley Weyman: town, runs up a steep hill. At the top of the hill four roads
meet; and there, plain to be seen against the sky, is a finger-
post indicating which way leads to Bordeaux, and which to old
tiled Montauban, and which to Perigueux.
This hill had impressed me greatly on my journey south; perhaps
because I had enjoyed from it my first extended view of the
Garonne Valley, and had there felt myself on the verge of the
south country where my mission lay. It had taken root in my
memory, so that I had come to look upon its bare rounded head,
with the guide-post and the four roads, as the first outpost of
Paris, as the first sign of return to the old life.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: In the silence of the night, with her eyes fixed on the green silk
curtains which she no longer saw, the countess, forgetting the storm,
her husband, and her fears, recalled the days which seemed to her
longer than years, so full were they,--days when she loved, and was
beloved!--and the moment when, fearing her mother's sternness, she had
slipped one morning into her father's study to whisper her girlish
confidences on his knee, waiting for his smile at her caresses to say
in his ear, "Will you scold me if I tell you something?" Once more she
heard her father say, after a few questions in reply to which she
spoke for the first time of her love, "Well, well, my child, we will
think of it. If he studies well, if he fits himself to succeed me, if
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith: always look to these things myself.
HARDCASTLE. I must insist, sir, you'll make yourself easy on that
head.
MARLOW. You see I'm resolved on it. (Aside.) A very troublesome
fellow this, as I ever met with.
HARDCASTLE. Well, sir, I'm resolved at least to attend you. (Aside.)
This may be modem modesty, but I never saw anything look so like
old-fashioned impudence. [Exeunt MARLOW and HARDCASTLE.]
HASTINGS. (Alone.) So I find this fellow's civilities begin to grow
troublesome. But who can be angry at those assiduities which are meant
to please him? Ha! what do I see? Miss Neville, by all that's happy!
She Stoops to Conquer |
