| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: of man," said Caleb, with the deep tone and grave shake of the head
which always came when he used this phrase--"The soul of man,
when it gets fairly rotten, will bear you all sorts of poisonous
toad-stools, and no eye can see whence came the seed thereof."
It was one of Caleb's quaintnesses, that in his difficulty of finding
speech for his thought, he caught, as it were, snatches of diction
which he associated with various points of view or states of mind;
and whenever he had a feeling of awe, he was haunted by a sense
of Biblical phraseology, though he could hardly have given
a strict quotation.
CHAPTER XLI.
Middlemarch |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Ruling Passion by Henry van Dyke: buy the shining plates of tin for the roof, and a beautiful cross of
gilt for the pinnacle.
Leclere was in front of the tower putting on his overalls.
Vaillantcoeur came up, swearing mad. Three or four other workmen
were standing about.
"Look here, you Leclere," said he, "I tried one of the cross-girders
yesterday afternoon and it wouldn't go. The templet on the north is
crooked--crooked as your teeth. We had to let the girder down
again. I suppose we must trim it off some way, to get a level
bearing, and make the tower weak, just to match your sacre bad work,
eh?"
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence: sewing by hand, made all shirts and children's clothing--he would
read to her from the newspaper, slowly pronouncing and delivering
the words like a man pitching quoits. Often she hurried him on,
giving him a phrase in anticipation. And then he took her words humbly.
The silences between them were peculiar. There would be
the swift, slight "cluck" of her needle, the sharp "pop" of his
lips as he let out the smoke, the warmth, the sizzle on the bars
as he spat in the fire. Then her thoughts turned to William.
Already he was getting a big boy. Already he was top of the class,
and the master said he was the smartest lad in the school.
She saw him a man, young, full of vigour, making the world glow
Sons and Lovers |
