| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: caution with which she had whisked away Mr. Rushworth's
pink satin cloak as her brother-in-law entered,
she could hardly be said to shew any sign of alarm;
but she was vexed by the _manner_ of his return.
It had left her nothing to do. Instead of being sent
for out of the room, and seeing him first, and having
to spread the happy news through the house, Sir Thomas,
with a very reasonable dependence, perhaps, on the nerves
of his wife and children, had sought no confidant but
the butler, and had been following him almost instantaneously
into the drawing-room. Mrs. Norris felt herself defrauded
Mansfield Park |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac: at the instant when desire had reached its crisis. Full of gratitude
to the hat-making trade, he always declared that it was his efforts in
behalf of the exterior of the human head which had enabled him to
understand its interior: he had capped and crowned so many people, he
was always flinging himself at their heads, etc. His jokes about hats
and heads were irrepressible, though perhaps not dazzling.
Nevertheless, after August and October, 1830, he abandoned the hat
trade and the article Paris, and tore himself from things mechanical
and visible to mount into the higher spheres of Parisian speculation.
"He forsook," to use his own words, "matter for mind; manufactured
products for the infinitely purer elaborations of human intelligence."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: the universal repast. Each creature had his pasture or his mess.
The ring-dove found his hemp-seed, the chaffinch found his millet,
the goldfinch found chickweed, the red-breast found worms, the green
finch found flies, the fly found infusoriae, the bee found flowers.
They ate each other somewhat, it is true, which is the misery of evil
mixed with good; but not a beast of them all had an empty stomach.
The two little abandoned creatures had arrived in the vicinity
of the grand fountain, and, rather bewildered by all this light,
they tried to hide themselves, the instinct of the poor and the weak
in the presence of even impersonal magnificence; and they kept
behind the swans' hutch.
Les Miserables |
