| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson: 'O, O!' said madam dubiously.
He was at her feet. 'Do not trifle with my hopes,' he pleaded.
'Tell me, dearest Madame von Rosen, tell me! You cannot be cruel:
it is not in your nature. Give? I can give nothing; I have
nothing; I can only plead in mercy.'
'Do not,' she said; 'it is not fair. Otto, you know my weakness.
Spare me. Be generous.'
'O, madam,' he said, 'it is for you to be generous, to have pity.'
He took her hand and pressed it; he plied her with caresses and
appeals. The Countess had a most enjoyable sham siege, and then
relented. She sprang to her feet, she tore her dress open, and, all
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Chance by Joseph Conrad: wife was not hiding there. The short flares illuminated his grave,
immovable countenance while I let myself go completely and laughed
in peals.
I asked him if he really and truly supposed that any sane girl would
go and hide in that shed; and if so why?
Disdainful of my mirth he merely muttered his basso-profundo
thankfulness that we had not found her anywhere about there. Having
grown extremely sensitive (an effect of irritation) to the
tonalities, I may say, of this affair, I felt that it was only an
imperfect, reserved, thankfulness, with one eye still on the
possibilities of the several ponds in the neighbourhood. And I
Chance |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: him, and which, together with the deafness of which he sometimes
complained in rainy weather, was thought in Saumur to be a natural
defect, became at this crisis so wearisome to the two Cruchots that
while they listened they unconsciously made faces and moved their
lips, as if pronouncing the words over which he was hesitating and
stuttering at will. Here it may be well to give the history of this
impediment of the speech and hearing of Monsieur Grandet. No one in
Anjou heard better, or could pronounce more crisply the French
language (with an Angevin accent) than the wily old cooper. Some years
earlier, in spite of his shrewdness, he had been taken in by an
Israelite, who in the course of the discussion held his hand behind
Eugenie Grandet |
