| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: a pretty voracious appetite for miscellaneous reading which was
fostered by the Penge Middleton Library, did not leave me much
leisure for local topography. On Sundays also I sang in the choir
at St. Martin's Church, and my mother did not like me to walk out
alone on the Sabbath afternoon, she herself slumbered, so that I
wrote or read at home. I must confess I was at home as little as I
could contrive.
Home, after my father's death, had become a very quiet and
uneventful place indeed. My mother had either an unimaginative
temperament or her mind was greatly occupied with private religious
solicitudes, and I remember her talking to me but little, and that
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Soul of a Bishop by H. G. Wells: spot. Within a couple of minutes the affair had become highly
improper. They had raised their voices, they had spoken with the
utmost familiarity of almost unspeakable things. There had been
even attempts at epigram. Athanasian epigrams. Bent the novelist
had doubted if originally there had been a Third Person in the
Trinity at all. He suggested a reaction from a too-Manichaean
dualism at some date after the time of St. John's Gospel. He
maintained obstinately that that Gospel was dualistic.
The unpleasant quality of the talk was far more manifest in the
retrospect than it had been at the time. It had seemed then bold
and strange, but not impossible; now in the cold darkness it
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: incomprehensible, but they charm me. What is it you mean to say?"
"You are right; I forget to be foolish,--to be the poor creature whose
weaknesses gratify you. I torment you, Wilfrid. You came to these
Northern lands for rest, you, worn-out by the impetuous struggle of
genius unrecognized, you, weary with the patient toils of science,
you, who well-nigh dyed your hands in crime and wore the fetters of
human justice--"
Wilfrid dropped speechless on the carpet. Seraphita breathed softly on
his forehead, and in a moment he fell asleep at her feet.
"Sleep! rest!" she said, rising.
She passed her hands over Wilfrid's brow; then the following sentences
Seraphita |
