| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells: incontinently to the topic of the music halls. He told me
some anecdotes.
"Left it all," he said, "ten years ago. How jolly it all used to be!
But I made a young ass of myself,--played myself out before I was
twenty-one. I daresay it's all different now. But I must look up
that ass of a cook, and see what he's done to your mutton."
The growling overhead was renewed, so suddenly and with so much savage
anger that it startled me. "What's that?" I called after him,
but the door had closed. He came back again with the boiled mutton,
and I was so excited by the appetising smell of it that I forgot
the noise of the beast that had troubled me.
The Island of Doctor Moreau |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Emma McChesney & Co. by Edna Ferber: For ten minutes, the silence of the room was unbroken except for
the crackling of papers. Then Emma McChesney put down the first
sheaf and looked up at her business partner.
"Is that a fair sample?" she demanded.
"Very," answered T. A. Buck, and handed her another set.
Another ten minutes of silence. Emma McChesney reached out a
hand for still another set of papers. The pink of repressed
excitement was tinting her cheeks.
"They're--they're all like this?"
"Practically, yes."
Mrs. McChesney faced him, her eyes wide, her breath coming fast.
Emma McChesney & Co. |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Droll Stories, V. 1 by Honore de Balzac: Mala spent his angels--acquired with so much labour--in perfumes,
baths, fomentations, and other fooleries. He played the fop so well,
one would have thought him the fancy cavalier of a gay lady. He
wandered about the town in order to find the residence of his heart's
queen; and when he asked the passers-by to whom belonged the aforesaid
house, they laughed in his face, saying--
"Whence comes this precious fellow that has not heard of La Belle
Imperia?"
He was very much afraid he and his angels were gone to the devil when
he heard the name, and knew into what a nice mess he had voluntarily
fallen.
Droll Stories, V. 1 |
