| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: Miss Ward's match, indeed, when it came to the point,
was not contemptible: Sir Thomas being happily able
to give his friend an income in the living of Mansfield;
and Mr. and Mrs. Norris began their career of conjugal
felicity with very little less than a thousand a year.
But Miss Frances married, in the common phrase,
to disoblige her family, and by fixing on a lieutenant
of marines, without education, fortune, or connexions,
did it very thoroughly. She could hardly have made
a more untoward choice. Sir Thomas Bertram had interest,
which, from principle as well as pride--from a general
Mansfield Park |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: much trouble in disencumbering their own minds of the dreams of
bygone generations (whether facts, like cockatrices, basilisks, and
krakens, the breeding of bees out of a dead ox, and of geese from
barnacles; or theories, like those of elements, the VIS PLASTRIX in
Nature, animal spirits, and the other musty heirlooms of
Aristotleism and Neo-platonism), to try to make a science popular,
which as yet was not even a science at all. Honour to them,
nevertheless. Honour to Ray and his illustrious contemporaries in
Holland and France. Honour to Seba and Aldrovandus; to Pomet, with
his "Historie of Drugges;" even to the ingenious Don Saltero, and
his tavern-museum in Cheyne Walk. Where all was chaos, every man
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: medal granted at the exposition of 1825). Madame Baudoyer, whose only
daughter was treading--to use an expression of old Saillard's--on the
tail of her twelve years, laid claim to Falleix, a thickset, swarthy,
active young fellow, of shrewd principles, whose education she was
superintending. The said education, according to her ideas, consisted
in teaching him to play boston, to hold his cards properly, and not to
let others see his game; to shave himself regularly before he came to
the house, and to wash his hands with good cleansing soap; not to
swear, to speak her kind of French, to wear boots instead of shoes,
cotton shirts instead of sacking, and to brush up his hair instead of
plastering it flat. During the preceding week Elisabeth had finally
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