| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy: indoors, or at any rate to ride along the Shottsford road to meet
his ailing wife, he should be doing despite to her by going
elsewhere. The old man went out-of-doors again; and his horse
being hardly unsaddled as yet, he told Upjohn to retighten the
girths, when he again mounted, and rode off at the heels of the
surgeon.
By the time that Melbury reached the park, he was prepared to go
any lengths in combating this rank and reckless errantry of his
daughter's husband. He would fetch home Edgar Fitzpiers to-night
by some means, rough or fair: in his view there could come of his
interference nothing worse than what existed at present. And yet
The Woodlanders |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: "That is certainly the sane view; but the queer thing about
society is that the people who regard it as an end are those who
are in it, and not the critics on the fence. It's just the other
way with most shows--the audience may be under the illusion, but
the actors know that real life is on the other side of the
footlights. The people who take society as an escape from work
are putting it to its proper use; but when it becomes the thing
worked for it distorts all the relations of life." Selden raised
himself on his elbow. "Good heavens!" he went on, "I don't
underrate the decorative side of life. It seems to me the sense
of splendour has justified itself by what it has produced. The
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: I had not suspected in advance that her comfortable face would
pull me up, and I somehow measured the importance of what I
had seen by my thus finding myself hesitate to mention it.
Scarce anything in the whole history seems to me so odd
as this fact that my real beginning of fear was one,
as I may say, with the instinct of sparing my companion.
On the spot, accordingly, in the pleasant hall and with her
eyes on me, I, for a reason that I couldn't then have phrased,
achieved an inward resolution--offered a vague pretext
for my lateness and, with the plea of the beauty of the night
and of the heavy dew and wet feet, went as soon as possible
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