| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: and with the child, and their few trunks, baskets, and bundles,
and two chairs and a table that were not in the sale, the two sat in
meditative talk.
Footsteps began stamping up and down the bare stairs,
the comers inspecting the goods, some of which were of so quaint
and ancient a make as to acquire an adventitious value as art.
Their door was tried once or twice, and to guard themselves
against intrusion Jude wrote "Private" on a scrap of paper,
and stuck it upon the panel.
They soon found that, instead of the furniture, their own
personal histories and past conduct began to be discussed to an
Jude the Obscure |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: person who had sold them to me. As it was, I did much better; for what I
brought her were decidedly superior to any that were at the Exchange when
I entered it at lunch time.
They were, as the up-country bride would have put it, "graciously
accepted." Miss La Heu stood them in water on the counter beside her
ledger. She was looking lovely.
"I expected you yesterday," she said. "The new Lady Baltimore was ready."
"Well, if it is not all eaten yet--"
"Oh, no! Not a slice gone."
"Ah, nobody does your art justice here!"
"Go and sit down at your table, please."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Pupil by Henry James: history, and he would have liked those who "bore his name" - as he
used to say to Pemberton with the humour that made his queer
delicacies manly - to carry themselves with an air. But their one
idea was to get in with people who didn't want them and to take
snubs as it they were honourable scars. Why people didn't want
them more he didn't know - that was people's own affair; after all
they weren't superficially repulsive, they were a hundred times
cleverer than most of the dreary grandees, the "poor swells" they
rushed about Europe to catch up with. "After all they ARE amusing
- they are!" he used to pronounce with the wisdom of the ages. To
which Pemberton always replied: "Amusing - the great Moreen
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