| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton: rising in pitch: "I mean to do a lot of travelling myself
before long." A tremor crossed her face, and leaning
over to Reggie Chivers, he cried out: "I say, Reggie,
what do you say to a trip round the world: now, next
month, I mean? I'm game if you are--" at which Mrs.
Reggie piped up that she could not think of letting
Reggie go till after the Martha Washington Ball she
was getting up for the Blind Asylum in Easter week;
and her husband placidly observed that by that time he
would have to be practising for the International Polo
match.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: fashion would never consent to meet Mme. de Beauseant. Mme. de
Beauseant quite understood that the worthy dowager must of necessity
be her enemy, and that she would try to draw Gaston from his
unhallowed and immoral way of life. The Marquise de Beauseant would
willingly have sold her property and gone back to Geneva, but she
could not bring herself to do it; it would mean that she distrusted M.
de Nueil. Moreover, he had taken a great fancy to this very Valleroy
estate, where he was making plantations and improvements. She would
not deprive him of a piece of pleasurable routine-work, such as women
always wish for their husbands, and even for their lovers.
A Mlle. de la Rodiere, twenty-two years of age, an heiress with a
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert: better than the Gauls. Zarxas lay stretched at full length among the
Balearians, his hair over his arm, inert. Spendius found a plant with
broad leaves filled abundantly with juice, and after declaring that it
was poisonous, so as to keep off the rest, he fed himself upon it.
They were too weak to knock down the flying crows with stones.
Sometimes when a gypaetus was perched on a corpse, and had been
mangling it for a long time, a man would set himself to crawl towards
it with a javelin between his teeth. He would support himself with one
hand, and after taking a good aim, throw his weapon. The white-
feathered creature, disturbed by the noise, would desist and look
about in tranquil fashion like a cormorant on a rock, and would then
Salammbo |
