| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: position in which the prejudices of the times had placed it. He
himself took willingly enough to the feasts and jovialities which
usually followed his principal operations. The habit of being on such
occasions the most important personage in the company, had added to
his natural gaiety a sufficient dose of serious vanity. His
impertinences were usually well received in crucial moments when it
often pleased him to perform his operations with a certain slow
majesty. He was, in other respects, as inquisitive as a nightingale,
as greedy as a hound, and as garrulous as all diplomatists who talk
incessantly and betray no secrets. In spite of these defects developed
in him by the endless adventures into which his profession led him,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: ruined, rustic summer house, midway on the hillside. It is a
mere skeleton of slender, decaying tree trunks, with neither
walls nor a roof; nothing but a tracery of branches and twigs,
which the next wintry blast will be very likely to scatter in
fragments along the terrace. It looks, and is, as evanescent as
a dream; and yet, in its rustic network of boughs, it has
somehow enclosed a hint of spiritual beauty, and has become a
true emblem of the subtile and ethereal mind that planned it. I
made Eustace Bright sit down on a snow bank, which had heaped
itself over the mossy seat, and gazing through the arched
windows opposite, he acknowledged that the scene at once grew
Tanglewood Tales |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Persuasion by Jane Austen: from Colonel Wallis; and who can know him better than Colonel Wallis?"
"My dear Mrs Smith, Mr Elliot's wife has not been dead much above
half a year. He ought not to be supposed to be paying his addresses
to any one."
"Oh! if these are your only objections," cried Mrs Smith, archly,
"Mr Elliot is safe, and I shall give myself no more trouble about him.
Do not forget me when you are married, that's all. Let him know me to be
a friend of yours, and then he will think little of the trouble required,
which it is very natural for him now, with so many affairs and engagements
of his own, to avoid and get rid of as he can; very natural, perhaps.
Ninety-nine out of a hundred would do the same. Of course,
Persuasion |
