| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Silas Marner by George Eliot: understood except by those who have undergone a bewildering
separation from a supremely loved object. In the evening twilight,
and later whenever the night was not dark, Silas looked out on that
narrow prospect round the Stone-pits, listening and gazing, not with
hope, but with mere yearning and unrest.
This morning he had been told by some of his neighbours that it was
New Year's Eve, and that he must sit up and hear the old year rung
out and the new rung in, because that was good luck, and might bring
his money back again. This was only a friendly Raveloe-way of
jesting with the half-crazy oddities of a miser, but it had perhaps
helped to throw Silas into a more than usually excited state. Since
Silas Marner |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott: with a mocking laugh. Having warbled his thanks and put the potions
in his boots, Hugo departed, and Hagar informed the audience that
as he had killed a few of her friends in times past, she had cursed
him, and intends to thwart his plans, and be revenged on him. Then
the curtain fell, and the audience reposed and ate candy while
discussing the merits of the play.
A good deal of hammering went on before the curtain rose again,
but when it became evident what a masterpiece of stage carpentery
had been got up, no one murmured at the delay. It was truly superb.
A tower rose to the ceiling, halfway up appeared a window with a
lamp burning in it, and behind the white curtain appeared Zara in
Little Women |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Pupil by Henry James: weariness and relief. "Ah now that we look at the facts it's all
right!"
CHAPTER VII
They looked at the facts a good deal after this and one of the
first consequences of their doing so was that Pemberton stuck it
out, in his friend's parlance, for the purpose. Morgan made the
facts so vivid and so droll, and at the same time so bald and so
ugly, that there was fascination in talking them over with him,
just as there would have been heartlessness in leaving him alone
with them. Now that the pair had such perceptions in common it was
useless for them to pretend they didn't judge such people; but the
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