| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: bill of exchange for one hundred and fifty thousand francs."
"I hope I may. If that be so, cannot your friend settle your
difficulties here? You could live quietly at Lanstrac for five or six
years on your wife's income, and so recover yourself."
"No assignment or economy on my part could pay off fifteen hundred
thousand francs of debt, in which my wife is involved to the amount of
five hundred and fifty thousand."
"You cannot mean to say that in four years you have incurred a million
and a half of debt?"
"Nothing is more certain, Mathias. Did I not give those diamonds to my
wife? Did I not spend the hundred and fifty thousand I received from
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Professor by Charlotte Bronte: sir." "No matter," I reflected. "What has been left incomplete
now, shall be finished another day." Nor did I fail to keep the
promise thus made to myself. It was difficult to get even a few
words of particular conversation with one pupil among so many;
but, according to the old proverb, "Where there is a will, there
is a way;" and again and again I managed to find an opportunity
for exchanging a few words with Mdlle. Henri, regardless that
envy stared and detraction whispered whenever I approached her.
"Your book an instant." Such was the mode in which I often began
these brief dialogues; the time was always just at the conclusion
of the lesson; and motioning to her to rise, I installed myself
The Professor |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from My Aunt Margaret's Mirror by Walter Scott: with shout and bound. I remember the suppressed bitterness of
the moment, and, conscious of my own inferiority, the feeling of
envy with which I regarded the easy movements and elastic steps
of my more happily formed brethren. Alas! these goodly barks
have all perished on life's wide ocean, and only that which
seemed so little seaworthy, as the naval phrase goes, has reached
the port when the tempest is over. Then there is the pool,
where, manoeuvring our little navy, constructed out of the broad
water-flags, my elder brother fell in, and was scarce saved from
the watery element to die under Nelson's banner. There is the
hazel copse also, in which my brother Henry used to gather nuts,
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