| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: "I suppose your father wanted your earnings," said old Mr. Featherstone,
with his usual power of unpleasant surmise, when Mary returned
to him. "He makes but a tight fit, I reckon. You're of age now;
you ought to be saving for yourself."
"I consider my father and mother the best part of myself, sir,"
said Mary, coldly.
Mr. Featherstone grunted: he could not deny that an ordinary sort
of girl like her might be expected to be useful, so he thought
of another rejoinder, disagreeable enough to be always apropos.
"If Fred Vincy comes to-morrow, now, don't you keep him chattering:
let him come up to me."
Middlemarch |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: out, is often rather a sort of brown study than an act of culture. I
have myself palmed off yesterday's issue on a friend, and seen him
re-peruse it for a continuance of minutes with an air at once
refreshed and solemn. Workmen, perhaps, pay more attention; but
though they may be eager listeners, they have rarely seemed to me
either willing or careful thinkers. Culture is not measured by the
greatness of the field which is covered by our knowledge, but by the
nicety with which we can perceive relations in that field, whether
great or small. Workmen, certainly those who were on board with me,
I found wanting in this quality or habit of the mind. They did not
perceive relations, but leaped to a so-called cause, and thought the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini: and wrought his will. It was idle to tell himself that the seed
he had sown was bearing fruit. That the demands he had voiced in
Nantes for the Third Estate had been granted by M. Necker, thanks
largely to the commotion which his anonymous speech had made. That
was not his concern or his mission. It was no part of his concern
to set about the regeneration of mankind, or even the regeneration
of the social structure of France. His concern was to see that M.
de La Tour d'Azyr paid to the uttermost liard for the brutal wrong
he had done Philippe de Vilmorin. And it did not increase his
self-respect to find that the danger in which Aline stood of being
married to the Marquis was the real spur to his rancour and to
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