| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Cousin Betty by Honore de Balzac: last touches, screwing in the last rivets.
This clock represented the twelve Hours, charmingly personified by
twelve female figures whirling round in so mad and swift a dance that
three little Loves perched on a pile of fruit and flowers could not
stop one of them; only the torn skirts of Midnight remained in the
hand of the most daring cherub. The group stood on an admirably
treated base, ornamented with grotesque beasts. The hours were told by
a monstrous mouth that opened to yawn, and each Hour bore some
ingeniously appropriate symbol characteristic of the various
occupations of the day.
It is now easy to understand the extraordinary attachment of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence: to keep his own privacy.
He had made the hut tidy, put the little table and chair near the
fireplace, left a little pile of kindling and small logs, and put the
tools and traps away as far as possible, effacing himself. Outside, by
the clearing, he had built a low little roof of boughs and straw, a
shelter for the birds, and under it stood the live coops. And, one day
when she came, she found two brown hens sitting alert and fierce in the
coops, sitting on pheasants' eggs, and fluffed out so proud and deep in
all the heat of the pondering female blood. This almost broke Connie's
heart. She, herself was so forlorn and unused, not a female at all,
just a mere thing of terrors.
Lady Chatterley's Lover |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: over which the little Jews wagged their big noses. We all strolled
to and fro and took pennyworths of rest; the long, level cliff-top,
edged in places with its iron rail, might have been the deck of a
huge crowded ship. There were old folks in Bath chairs, and there
was one dear chair, creeping to its last full stop, by the side of
which I always walked. There was in fine weather the coast of
France to look at, and there were the usual things to say about it;
there was also in every state of the atmosphere our friend Mrs.
Meldrum, a subject of remark not less inveterate. The widow of an
officer in the Engineers, she had settled, like many members of the
martial miscellany, well within sight of the hereditary enemy, who
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