| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: threads of this strange plot led. The Gordian knot of the drama,
already so bloody, was surely in a meeting between Madame Jules, her
husband, and that man; and a blade able to cut the closest of such
knots would not be wanting.
The house was one of those which belong to the class called
/cabajoutis/. This significant name is given by the populace of Paris
to houses which are built, as it were, piecemeal. They are nearly
always composed of buildings originally separate but afterwards united
according to the fancy of the various proprietors who successively
enlarge them; or else they are houses begun, left unfinished, again
built upon, and completed,--unfortunate structures which have passed,
Ferragus |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Complete Poems of Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Can this be the Messiah?
PHILIP.
Come and see.
NATHANAEL.
The summer sun grows hot: I am anhungered.
How cheerily the Sabbath-breaking quail
Pipes in the corn, and bids us to his Feast
Of Wheat Sheaves! How the bearded, ripening ears
Toss in the roofless temple of the air;
As if the unseen hand of some High-Priest
Waved them before Mount Tabor as an altar!
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: Matilda with the Vecchia ice cream and the petits fours. He was deeply
disquieted. Eight years ago, when Verona had given a high-school party, the
children had been featureless gabies. Now they were men and women of the
world, very supercilious men and women; the boys condescended to Babbitt, they
wore evening-clothes, and with hauteur they accepted cigarettes from silver
cases. Babbitt had heard stories of what the Athletic Club called "goings on"
at young parties; of girls "parking" their corsets in the dressing-room, of
"cuddling" and "petting," and a presumable increase in what was known as
Immorality. To-night he believed the stories. These children seemed bold to
him, and cold. The girls wore misty chiffon, coral velvet, or cloth of gold,
and around their dipping bobbed hair were shining wreaths. He had it, upon
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