| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy: a drayman without losing much of its perpendicular.
"And are you going to bide in Casterbridge, sir?" she asked.
"Ah--no!" said the Scotchman, with melancholy fatality in
his voice, "I'm only passing thirrough! I am on my way to
Bristol, and on frae there to foreign parts."
"We be truly sorry to hear it," said Solomon Longways. "We
can ill afford to lose tuneful wynd-pipes like yours when
they fall among us. And verily, to mak' acquaintance with a
man a-come from so far, from the land o' perpetual snow, as
we may say, where wolves and wild boars and other dangerous
animalcules be as common as blackbirds here-about--why, 'tis
The Mayor of Casterbridge |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: years had been drawing an income of fifty thousand francs a year, did
not spend more than four-and-twenty thousand francs a year, while
receiving all the upper circle of Besancon every Monday and Friday. On
Monday they gave a dinner, on Friday an evening party. Thus, in twelve
years, what a sum must have accumulated from twenty-six thousand
francs a year, saved and invested with the judgment that distinguishes
those old families! It was very generally supposed that Madame de
Watteville, thinking she had land enough, had placed her savings in
the three per cents, in 1830. Rosalie's dowry would therefore, as the
best informed opined, amount to about twenty thousand francs a year.
So for the last five years Amedee had worked like a mole to get into
Albert Savarus |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence: into a profound sleep that seemed to give her faith.
In convalescence he would sit up in bed, see the fluffy
horses feeding at the troughs in the field, scattering their hay
on the trodden yellow snow; watch the miners troop home--small,
black figures trailing slowly in gangs across the white field.
Then the night came up in dark blue vapour from the snow.
In convalescence everything was wonderful. The snowflakes,
suddenly arriving on the window-pane, clung there a moment like swallows,
then were gone, and a drop of water was crawling down the glass.
The snowflakes whirled round the corner of the house,
like pigeons dashing by. Away across the valley the little black
Sons and Lovers |
