| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: to ask, as the music ceased, if Miss Bart had not dined with her.
"Lily? She's just gone. She had to run off, I forget where.
Wasn't she wonderful last night?"
"Who's that? Lily?" asked Jack Stepney, from the depths of a
neighbouring arm-chair. "Really, you know, I'm no prude, but when
it comes to a girl standing there as if she was up at auction--I
thought seriously of speaking to cousin Julia."
"You didn't know Jack had become our social censor?" Mrs. Fisher
said to Selden with a laugh; and Stepney spluttered, amid the
general derision: "But she's a cousin, hang it, and when a man's
married--TOWN TALK was full of her this morning."
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Forged Coupon by Leo Tolstoy: He lived like this for about a year and a half,
and towards the end of the second year a most
startling thing happened to him. He discovered
one day, to his great surprise, that, in addition to
the relation of usefulness existing between people,
there was also another, a peculiar relation of quite
a different character. Instead of a man being
wanted to clean boots, and go on errands and har-
ness horses, he is not wanted to be of any service
at all, but another human being wants to serve him
and pet him. Suddenly Alyosha felt he was such
The Forged Coupon |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: asked Dorian, looking bored. "If so, I should not like them to be left
in want, and will send them any sum of money you may think necessary."
"We don't know who he is, sir. That is what I took the liberty
of coming to you about."
"Don't know who he is?" said Dorian, listlessly. "What do you mean?
Wasn't he one of your men?"
"No, sir. Never saw him before. Seems like a sailor, sir."
The pen dropped from Dorian Gray's hand, and he felt as if his
heart had suddenly stopped beating. "A sailor?" he cried out.
"Did you say a sailor?"
"Yes, sir. He looks as if he had been a sort of sailor;
The Picture of Dorian Gray |
