| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: writer, or the talk of a brilliant conversationalist, is the
apt choice and contrast of the words employed. It is,
indeed, a strange art to take these blocks, rudely conceived
for the purpose of the market or the bar, and by tact of
application touch them to the finest meanings and
distinctions, restore to them their primal energy, wittily
shift them to another issue, or make of them a drum to rouse
the passions. But though this form of merit is without doubt
the most sensible and seizing, it is far from being equally
present in all writers. The effect of words in Shakespeare,
their singular justice, significance, and poetic charm, is
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: " 'Precisely,' said he. "Ah, by the by, you will allow me to go to see
you?' (Plainly the old man found it not so easy to assume the air of
good-humor.)
" 'I shall always be glad.'
" 'Ah! yes, but it would be very difficult to arrange of a morning.
You will have your affairs to attend to, and I have mine.'
" 'Then come in the evening.'
" 'Oh, no!' he answered briskly, 'you ought to go into society and see
your clients, and I myself have my friends at my cafe.'
" 'His friends!' thought I to myself.--'Very well,' said I, 'why not
come at dinner-time?'
Gobseck |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James: questions, give difficult change and, more than anything else,
count words as numberless as the sands of the sea, the words of the
telegrams thrust, from morning to night, through the gap left in
the high lattice, across the encumbered shelf that her forearm
ached with rubbing. This transparent screen fenced out or fenced
in, according to the side of the narrow counter on which the human
lot was cast, the duskiest corner of a shop pervaded not a little,
in winter, by the poison of perpetual gas, and at all times by the
presence of hams, cheese, dried fish, soap, varnish, paraffin and
other solids and fluids that she came to know perfectly by their
smells without consenting to know them by their names.
|
