| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy: nobody. I was made for better things. However, I
don't like to see your concerns going to ruin, as they
must if you keep in this mind.... I hate taking my
own measure so plain, but, upon my life, your provok-
ing ways make a man say what he wouldn't dream of
at other times! I own to being rather interfering. But
you know well enough how it is, and who she is that I
like too well, and feel too much like a fool about to be
civil to her!"
It is more than probable that she privately and un-
consciously respected him a little for this grim fidelity,
 Far From the Madding Crowd |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Juana by Honore de Balzac: whole city howling, running, panting after him. Nevertheless, he kept
his ideas and his presence of mind. Presently he reached the wall of
the garden of his house. The place was perfectly silent, and he
thought he had foiled his pursuers, though a distant murmur of the
tumult came to his ears like the roaring of the sea. He dipped some
water from a brook and drank it. Then, observing a pile of stones on
the road, he hid his treasure in it; obeying one of those vague
thoughts which come to criminals at a moment when the faculty to judge
their actions under all bearings deserts them, and they think to
establish their innocence by want of proof of their guilt.
That done, he endeavored to assume a placid countenance; he even tried
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Professor by Charlotte Bronte: say how gainful; I communicated details to Messrs. Vandenhuten
and Hunsden; nobody else can be interested in hearing them.
Accounts being wound up, and our professional connection disposed
of, we both agreed that, as mammon was not our master, nor his
service that in which we desired to spend our lives; as our
desires were temperate, and our habits unostentatious, we had now
abundance to live on--abundance to leave our boy; and should
besides always have a balance on hand, which, properly managed by
right sympathy and unselfish activity, might help philanthropy in
her enterprises, and put solace into the hand of charity.
To England we now resolved to take wing; we arrived there safely;
 The Professor |