| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Copy-Cat & Other Stories by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: blonde, her complexion was as roses, and the corals
were ideal for her. As Jane regarded her friend's
beauty, however, the fact that Viola was not young,
that she was as old as herself, hid it and overshad-
owed it.
"Well, Jane, don't you think I look well in the
corals, after all?" asked Viola, and there was some-
thing pitiful in her voice.
When a man or a woman holds fast to youth, even
if successfully, there is something of the pitiful and
the tragic involved. It is the everlasting struggle
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: Madame de Mortsauf talked about local affairs, the harvest, the
vintage, and other matters to which I was a total stranger. This
usually argues either a want of breeding or great contempt for the
stranger present who is thus shut out from the conversation, but in
this case it was embarrassment. Though at first I thought she treated
me as a child and I envied the man of thirty to whom she talked of
serious matters which I could not comprehend, I came, a few months
later, to understand how significant a woman's silence often is, and
how many thoughts a voluble conversation masks. At first I attempted
to be at my ease and take part in it, then I perceived the advantages
of my situation and gave myself up to the charm of listening to Madame
The Lily of the Valley |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Hero of Our Time by M.Y. Lermontov: what I call life.
During supper Grushnitski kept whispering
and exchanging winks with the captain of
dragoons.
CHAPTER XI
14th June.
VERA and her husband left this morning for
Kislovodsk. I met their carriage as I was
walking to Princess Ligovski's. Vera nodded to
me: reproach was in her glance.
Who is to blame, then? Why will she not give
|
