| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: confidential maid, and two small chairs. There was no fire. That was
all the furniture, not enough to fill ten lines in an inventory.
" 'My dear sir, if you had seen, as I then saw, that vast room,
papered and hung with brown, you would have felt yourself transported
into a scene of a romance. It was icy, nay more, funereal,' and he
lifted his hand with a theatrical gesture and paused.
" 'By dint of seeking, as I approached the bed, at last I saw Madame
de Merret, under the glimmer of the lamp, which fell on the pillows.
Her face was as yellow as wax, and as narrow as two folded hands. The
Countess had a lace cap showing her abundant hair, but as white as
linen thread. She was sitting up in bed, and seemed to keep upright
La Grande Breteche |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: old days, of course, he would have taken a taxi off to a decent toyshop and
chosen them something in five minutes. But nowadays they had Russian toys,
French toys, Serbian toys--toys from God knows where. It was over a year
since Isabel had scrapped the old donkeys and engines and so on because
they were so "dreadfully sentimental" and "so appallingly bad for the
babies' sense of form."
"It's so important," the new Isabel had explained, "that they should like
the right things from the very beginning. It saves so much time later on.
Really, if the poor pets have to spend their infant years staring at these
horrors, one can imagine them growing up and asking to be taken to the
Royal Academy."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The American by Henry James: out of the box."
"My dear fellow," said Newman, remonstrantly, "what child's play!
You are not going to pick a quarrel about that girl, I hope."
"That girl has nothing to do with it, and I have no intention
of picking a quarrel. I am not a bully nor a fire-eater. I
simply wish to make a point that a gentleman must."
"Oh, damn your point!" said Newman. "That is the trouble with you Frenchmen;
you must be always making points. Well," he added, "be short.
But if you are going in for this kind of thing, we must ship you off
to America in advance."
"Very good," Valentin answered, "whenever you please.
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