| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Schoolmistress and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov: died unrecognized. Are Russian navigators, chemists, physicists,
mechanicians, and agriculturists popular with the public? Do our
cultivated masses know anything of Russian artists,
sculptors, and literary men? Some old literary hack,
hard-working and talented, will wear away the doorstep of the
publishers' offices for thirty-three years, cover reams of paper,
be had up for libel twenty times, and yet not step beyond his
ant-heap. Can you mention to me a single representative of our
literature who would have become celebrated if the rumor had not
been spread over the earth that he had been killed in a duel,
gone out of his mind, been sent into exile, or had cheated at
The Schoolmistress and Other Stories |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: daughter's sake, the father was for a while deferred to, and thus
peace was maintained; but this lasted only until the time when there
arrived, on a visit to the General, two kinswomen of his--the Countess
Bordirev and the Princess Uziakin, retired Court dames, but ladies who
still kept up a certain connection with Court circles, and therefore
were much fawned upon by their host. No sooner had they appeared on
the scene than (so it seemed to Tientietnikov) the General's attitude
towards the young man became colder--either he ceased to notice him at
all or he spoke to him familiarly, and as to a person having no
standing in society. This offended Tientietnikov deeply, and though,
when at length he spoke out on the subject, he retained sufficient
Dead Souls |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: lady-love in the dismal drawing-room, to which he became accustomed.
His long calls were devoted to watching Angelique's character; for his
prudence, happily, had made itself heard again in the day after their
first meeting. He always found her seated at a little table of some
West Indian wood, and engaged in marking the linen of her trousseau.
Angelique never spoke first on the subject of religion. If the young
lawyer amused himself with fingering the handsome rosary that she kept
in a little green velvet bag, if he laughed as he looked at a relic
such as usually is attached to this means of grace, Angelique would
gently take the rosary out of his hands and replace it in the bag
without a word, putting it away at once. When, now and then, Granville
|
