| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: the great interests of life, and consequently they represent nothing.
Nevertheless, Nathan maintains his ground by the quickness of his
mind, by those lucky hits which billiard-players call a "good stroke."
He is the cleverest shot at ideas on the fly in all Paris. His
fecundity is not his own, but that of his epoch; he lives on chance
events, and to control them he distorts their meaning. In short, he is
not TRUE; his presentation is false; in him, as Comte Felix said, is
the born juggler. Moreover, his pen gets its ink in the boudoir of an
actress.
Raoul Nathan is a fair type of the Parisian literary youth of the day,
with its false grandeurs and its real misery. He represents that youth
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lady Susan by Jane Austen: be in town, or whether she returns here again, I know not. I could not be
cordial in my invitation, but if she chuses to come no want of cordiality
on my part will keep her away. I could not help asking Reginald if he
intended being in London this winter, as soon as I found her ladyship's
steps would be bent thither; and though he professed himself quite
undetermined, there was something in his look and voice as he spoke which
contradicted his words. I have done with lamentation; I look upon the event
as so far decided that I resign myself to it in despair. If he leaves you
soon for London everything will be concluded.
Your affectionate, &c.,
C. VERNON.
Lady Susan |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: "I must make sure of this," thought he.
So he closed the door, and went softly round the corner again, and
then came noisily in, as though he were but now returned. And, lo!
by the time he opened the front door no bottle was to be seen; and
Kokua sat in a chair and started up like one awakened out of sleep.
"I have been drinking all day and making merry," said Keawe. "I
have been with good companions, and now I only come back for money,
and return to drink and carouse with them again."
Both his face and voice were as stern as judgment, but Kokua was
too troubled to observe.
"You do well to use your own, my husband," said she, and her words
|
