| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy: the sailor takes you. That's plain enough. It has been
done elsewhere--and why not here?"
"'Tis quite on the understanding that the young woman is
willing," said the sailor blandly. "I wouldn't hurt her
feelings for the world."
"Faith, nor I," said her husband. "But she is willing,
provided she can have the child. She said so only the other
day when I talked o't!"
"That you swear?" said the sailor to her.
"I do," said she, after glancing at her husband's face and
seeing no repentance there.
The Mayor of Casterbridge |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton: the parcel beside her plate.
Ann Eliza, tremulously engaged in filling the teapot, lifted
a look of hypocritical surprise.
"Sakes, Evelina! What's the matter?"
The younger sister had rapidly untied the string, and drawn
from its wrappings a round nickel clock of the kind to be bought
for a dollar-seventy-five.
"Oh, Ann Eliza, how could you?" She set the clock down, and
the sisters exchanged agitated glances across the table.
"Well," the elder retorted, "AIN'T it your birthday?"
"Yes, but--"
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: he adores her, than a married woman may play the part of a mistress.
This rule you both disregard.
In the first place, my child, from what you have yourself told me, it
is clear that the one unpardonable sin in society is to be happy. If
happiness exists, no one must know of it. But this is a small point.
What seems to me important is that the perfect equality which reigns
between lovers ought never to appear in the case of husband and wife,
under pain of undermining the whole fabric of society and entailing
terrible disasters. If it is painful to see a man whom nature has made
a nonentity, how much worse is the spectacle of a man of parts brought
to that position? Before very long you will have reduced Macumer to
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