| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: from a consciousness that she ought to offer to stay at
home herself.
"Fanny will feel quite as grateful as the occasion requires,"
was Edmund's only reply, and the subject dropt.
Fanny's gratitude, when she heard the plan, was, in fact,
much greater than her pleasure. She felt Edmund's kindness
with all, and more than all, the sensibility which he,
unsuspicious of her fond attachment, could be aware of;
but that he should forego any enjoyment on her account gave
her pain, and her own satisfaction in seeing Sotherton would
be nothing without him.
Mansfield Park |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: gravel-pit round here, and trying to guess how they could have
been made by currents of water, and yet never could make any guess
which would do." But after that it was all explained to me; and I
said, "Honour to the man who has let Madam How teach him what she
had been trying to teach me for fifteen years, while I was too
stupid to learn it. Now I am certain, as certain as I can be of
any earthly thing, that the whole of these Windsor Forest Flats
were ages ago ploughed and harrowed over and over again, by ice-
floes and icebergs drifting and stranding in a shallow sea."
And if you say, my dear child, as some people will say, that it is
like building a large house upon a single brick to be sure that
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Nana, Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille by Emile Zola: Vulcan's forge in the background. Battens, lowered from above, lit
up a sparkling substance which had been laid on with large dabs of
the brush. Side lights with red glasses and blue were so placed as
to produce the appearance of a fiery brazier, while on the floor of
the stage, in the far background, long lines of gaslight had been
laid down in order to throw a wall of dark rocks into sharp relief.
Hard by on a gentle, "practicable" incline, amid little points of
light resembling the illumination lamps scattered about in the grass
on the night of a public holiday, old Mme Drouard, who played Juno,
was sitting dazed and sleepy, waiting for her cue.
Presently there was a commotion, for Simonne, while listening to a
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