| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton: significant glances which Miss Mellins presently began to cast at
the couple in front of them: Ann Eliza could bear to connive at
Evelina's bliss, but not to acknowledge it to others.
At length Evelina's feet also failed her, and she turned to
suggest that they ought to be going home. Her flushed face had
grown pale with fatigue, but her eyes were radiant.
The return lived in Ann Eliza's memory with the persistence of
an evil dream. The horse-cars were packed with the returning
throng, and they had to let a dozen go by before they could push
their way into one that was already crowded. Ann Eliza had never
before felt so tired. Even Miss Mellins's flow of narrative ran
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Emma by Jane Austen: "But I am very much, and without being at all ashamed of it.
My love for Mr. and Mrs. Weston gives me a decided prejudice in
his favour."
"He is a person I never think of from one month's end to another,"
said Mr. Knightley, with a degree of vexation, which made Emma
immediately talk of something else, though she could not comprehend
why he should be angry.
To take a dislike to a young man, only because he appeared to be
of a different disposition from himself, was unworthy the real
liberality of mind which she was always used to acknowledge in him;
for with all the high opinion of himself, which she had often laid
Emma |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Chouans by Honore de Balzac: the commandant, who smiled amusedly; then she rapidly unfastened the
frogged fastenings of her jacket. Acting with that blindness which
often seizes women when their self-love is threatened and they are
anxious to show their power, as a child is impatient to play with a
toy that has just been given to it, she took from her bosom a paper
and presented it to Hulot.
"Read that," she said, with a sarcastic laugh.
Then she turned to the young man and gave him, in the excitement of
her triumph, a look in which mischief was mingled with an expression
of love. Their brows cleared, joy flushed each agitated face, and a
thousand contradictory thoughts rose in their hearts. Madame du Gua
The Chouans |
