| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Domestic Peace by Honore de Balzac: believe I have given her an excellent chance of regaining her
husband's affection. All the assistance I need of you is to play the
Colonel." She pointed to the Baron's friend, and the Countess smiled.
"Well, madame, do you at last know the name of the unknown?" asked
Martial, with an air of pique, to the Countess when he saw her alone.
"Yes," said Madame de Vaudremont, looking him in the face.
Her features expressed as much roguery as fun. The smile which gave
life to her lips and cheeks, the liquid brightness of her eyes, were
like the will-o'-the-wisp which leads travelers astray. Martial, who
believed that she still loved him, assumed the coquetting graces in
which a man is so ready to lull himself in the presence of the woman
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: tempestuous sea, had been flung, by the last mountain-wave of
his shipwreck, into a quiet harbor. There, as he lay more
than half lifeless on the strand, the fragrance of an earthly
rose-bud had come to his nostrils, and, as odors will, had
summoned up reminiscences or visions of all the living and
breathing beauty amid which he should have had his home. With
his native susceptibility of happy influences, he inhales the
slight, ethereal rapture into his soul, and expires!
And how did Phoebe regard Clifford? The girl's was not one of
those natures which are most attracted by what is strange and
exceptional in human character. The path which would best have
House of Seven Gables |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: she must act according to her judgment, and she said to herself
that her judgment was right--"indeed, if it had not been,
she would not have wished to act on it."
Mr. Trumbull was in the back-room of his office, and received
Rosamond with his finest manners, not only because he had much
sensibility to her charms, but because the good-natured fibre in him
was stirred by his certainty that Lydgate was in difficulties,
and that this uncommonly pretty woman--this young lady with the highest
personal attractions--was likely to feel the pinch of trouble--
to find herself involved in circumstances beyond her control.
He begged her to do him the honor to take a seat, and stood before
Middlemarch |
