| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: that positive gladness with which one adjusts one's self to an ache
that begins to succumb to treatment. To the treatment of time the
malady of life begins at a given moment to succumb; and these were
doubtless the hours at which that truth most came home to him. The
day was written for him there on which he had first become
acquainted with death, and the successive phases of the
acquaintance were marked each with a flame.
The flames were gathering thick at present, for Stransom had
entered that dark defile of our earthly descent in which some one
dies every day. It was only yesterday that Kate Creston had
flashed out her white fire; yet already there were younger stars
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Cousin Betty by Honore de Balzac: lace a woman's stays! You are too much a Pole!--There, it is ten
o'clock, my Wenceslas!" said Valerie, laughing at him.
At this very moment, a mischievous waiting-woman, by inserting a
knife, pushed up the hook of the double doors that formed the whole
security of Adam and Eve. She hastily pulled the door open--for the
servants of these dens have little time to waste--and discovered one
of the bewitching /tableaux de genre/ which Gavarni has so often shown
at the Salon.
"In here, madame," said the girl; and Cydalise went in, followed by
Montes.
"But there is some one here.--Excuse me, madame," said the country
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence: came upstairs with some tea.
"Your mother's nearly frightened me out of my wits--fainted away,"
she said.
He felt he could not bear it. His mother nursed him; he told
her about it.
"And now I should have done with them all," she said quietly.
"I will, mother."
She covered him up.
"And don't think about it," she said--"only try to go to sleep.
The doctor won't be here till eleven."
He had a dislocated shoulder, and the second day acute bronchitis
Sons and Lovers |
