| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Little Britain by Washington Irving: that quiet and simplicity might be again restored to the
community. But unluckily a rival power arose. An opulent
oilman died, and left a widow with a large jointure and a family
of buxom daughters. The young ladies had long been repining
in secret at the parsimony of a prudent father, which kept down
all their elegant aspirings. Their ambition, being now no longer
restrained, broke out into a blaze, and they openly took the
field against the family of the butcher. It is true that the
Lambs, having had the first start, had naturally an advantage of
them in the fashionable career. They could speak a little bad
French, play the piano, dance quadrilles, and had formed high
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: resided on an income such as made this association of her body
with the victims of Burke and Hare a flagrant insult to her memory.
Affairs were in this stage when Lydgate opened the subject of the
Hospital to Dorothea. We see that be was bearing enmity and silly
misconception with much spirit, aware that they were partly created
by his good share of success.
"They will not drive me away," he said, talking confidentially
in Mr. Farebrother's study. "I have got a good opportunity here,
for the ends I care most about; and I am pretty sure to get
income enough for our wants. By-and-by I shall go on as quietly
as possible: I have no seductions now away from home and work.
Middlemarch |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gambara by Honore de Balzac: welcomed in Paris with the cordiality, essentially French, that a man
always finds there, when he has a pleasant wit, a sounding name, two
hundred thousand francs a year, and a prepossessing person. To such a
man banishment could but be a pleasure tour; his property was simply
sequestrated, and his friends let him know that after an absence of
two years he might return to his native land without danger.
After rhyming /crudeli affanni/ with /i miei tiranni/ in a dozen or so
of sonnets, and maintaining as many hapless Italian refugees out of
his own purse, Count Andrea, who was so unlucky as to be a poet,
thought himself released from patriotic obligations. So, ever since
his arrival, he had given himself up recklessly to the pleasures of
Gambara |
