| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: morning, and you will divine my pleasures.'
"He got up, pushed the bolt of the door, drew a tapestry curtain
across it with a sharp grating sound of the rings on the rod, then he
sat down again.
" 'This morning,' he said, 'I had only two amounts to collect; the
rest of the bills that were due I gave away instead of cash to my
customers yesterday. So much saved, you see, for when I discount a
bill I always deduct two francs for a hired brougham--expenses of
collection. A pretty thing it would be, would it not, if my clients
were to set ME trudging all over Paris for half-a-dozen francs of
discount, when no man is my master, and I only pay seven francs in the
Gobseck |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn: is not of our human period: it is enormously old,-- so old that I feel
afraid when I try to think how old it is;-- and it is not a mixture of
nitrogen and oxygen. It is not made of air at all, but of ghost,-- the
substance of quintillions of quintillions of generations of souls blended
into one immense translucency,-- souls of people who thought in ways never
resembling our ways. Whatever mortal man inhales that atmosphere, he takes
into his blood the thrilling of these spirits; and they change the sense
within him,-- reshaping his notions of Space and Time,-- so that he can see
only as they used to see, and feel only as they used to feel, and think
only as they used to think. Soft as sleep are these changes of sense; and
Horai, discerned across them, might thus be described:--
Kwaidan |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy: angry still."
They parted, Farfrae returning into the dark Bowling Walk,
and Elizabeth-Jane going up the street. Without any
consciousness of what she was doing she started running with
all her might till she reached her father's door. "O dear
me--what am I at?" she thought, as she pulled up breathless.
Indoors she fell to conjecturing the meaning of Farfrae's
enigmatic words about not daring to ask her what he fain
would. Elizabeth, that silent observing woman, had long
noted how he was rising in favour among the townspeople; and
knowing Henchard's nature now she had feared that Farfrae's
The Mayor of Casterbridge |
