| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: neck of a parti-coloured woollen scarf of the kind which a wife makes
for her husband with her own hands, while accompanying the gift with
interminable injunctions as to how best such a garment ought to be
folded. True, bachelors also wear similar gauds, but, in their case,
God alone knows who may have manufactured the articles! For my part, I
cannot endure them. Having unfolded the scarf, the gentleman ordered
dinner, and whilst the various dishes were being got ready--cabbage
soup, a pie several weeks old, a dish of marrow and peas, a dish of
sausages and cabbage, a roast fowl, some salted cucumber, and the
sweet tart which stands perpetually ready for use in such
establishments; whilst, I say, these things were either being warmed
Dead Souls |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: previous week her friends had felt obliged to refute a rumour (at
which she would have laughed had she known if it) that her affection
for her nephew had an almost criminal motive. She took Birotteau to
her lawyer, who did not regard the case as an easy one. The vicar's
friends, inspired by the belief that justice was certain in so good a
cause, or inclined to procrastinate in a matter which did not concern
them personally, had put off bringing the suit until they returned to
Tours. Consequently the friends of Mademoiselle Gamard had taken the
initiative, and told the affair wherever they could to the injury of
Birotteau. The lawyer, whose practice was exclusively among the most
devout church people, amazed Madame de Listomere by advising her not
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield:
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