| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Adam Bede by George Eliot: my peace and my joy have come from having no life of my own, no
wants, no wishes for myself, and living only in God and those of
his creatures whose sorrows and joys he has given me to know.
Those have been very blessed years to me, and I feel that if I was
to listen to any voice that would draw me aside from that path, I
should be turning my back on the light that has shone upon me, and
darkness and doubt would take hold of me. We could not bless each
other, Adam, if there were doubts in my soul, and if I yearned,
when it was too late, after that better part which had once been
given me and I had put away from me."
"But if a new feeling has come into your mind, Dinah, and if you
Adam Bede |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: cleverness enough to be very shrewd where his own interests were
concerned. So he concluded to be a philanthropist on either count, and
at first made her his mistress.
"Hey! hey!" he said to himself, in his soldierly fashion. "I am an old
wolf, and a sheep shall not make a fool of me. Castanier, old man,
before you set up housekeeping, reconnoitre the girl's character for a
bit, and see if she is a steady sort."
This irregular union gave the Piedmontese a status the most nearly
approaching respectability among those which the world declines to
recognize. During the first year she took the nom de guerre of
Aquilina, one of the characters in Venice Preserved which she had
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: visited it so universally, that after a few days of exhibition
there was hardly an old man or a child who had not become
minutely familiar with its aspect. Even had the story of Drowne's
wooden image ended here, its celebrity might have been prolonged
for many years by the reminiscences of those who looked upon it
in their childhood, and saw nothing else so beautiful in after
life. But the town was now astounded by an event, the narrative
of which has formed itself into one of the most singular legends
that are yet to be met with in the traditionary chimney corners
of the New England metropolis, where old men and women sit
dreaming of the past, and wag their heads at the dreamers of the
Mosses From An Old Manse |
