| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Emma by Jane Austen: I remember that I was within a moment of confessing the truth,
and I then fancied she was not without suspicion; but I have no
doubt of her having since detected me, at least in some degree.--
She may not have surmised the whole, but her quickness must
have penetrated a part. I cannot doubt it. You will find,
whenever the subject becomes freed from its present restraints,
that it did not take her wholly by surprize. She frequently gave
me hints of it. I remember her telling me at the ball, that I
owed Mrs. Elton gratitude for her attentions to Miss Fairfax.--
I hope this history of my conduct towards her will be admitted
by you and my father as great extenuation of what you saw amiss.
Emma |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Profits of Religion by Upton Sinclair: remark--like Agassiz when some one gave him a fossil bone, and
his mind set to work to reconstruct the creature.
When a man is drunk, the Catholics do not ask if it was long
hours and improper working-conditions which drove him to
desperation; they do not ask if police and politicians are
getting a rake-off from the saloon, or if traction magnates are
using it as an agency for the controlling of votes; they do not
plunge into prohibition movements or good government
campaigns--they simply take the man in, at a standard price, and
the patient slave-sisters and attendants get him sober, and then
turn him out for society to make him drunk again. That is
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Recruit by Honore de Balzac: woman from the abyss toward which she was hurrying.
"If you talk about this affair," he said, "I shall be obliged to take
notice of it, and search her house, and THEN--"
He said no more, but all present understood what he meant.
The sincere friends of Madame de Dey were so alarmed about her, that
on the morning of the third day, the procureur-syndic of the commune
made his wife write her a letter, urging her to receive her visitors
as usual that evening. Bolder still, the old merchant went himself in
the morning to Madame de Dey's house, and, strong in the service he
wanted to render her, he insisted on seeing her, and was amazed to
find her in the garden gathering flowers for her vases.
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