| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: inward throbs. He had seen OUTSIDE of his life, not learned it
within, the way a woman was mourned when she had been loved for
herself: such was the force of his conviction of the meaning of
the stranger's face, which still flared for him as a smoky torch.
It hadn't come to him, the knowledge, on the wings of experience;
it had brushed him, jostled him, upset him, with the disrespect of
chance, the insolence of accident. Now that the illumination had
begun, however, it blazed to the zenith, and what he presently
stood there gazing at was the sounded void of his life. He gazed,
he drew breath, in pain; he turned in his dismay, and, turning, he
had before him in sharper incision than ever the open page of his
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini: mind came the memory of something that Mme. de Plougastel had said
of a letter that was on the table. He came forward, unhindered.
The announcement made, Mme. de Plougastel no longer feared the
sequel, and so she let him go. He walked unsteadily past this
new-found son of his, and took up the sheet that lay beside the
candlebranch. A long moment he stood reading it, none heeding him.
Aline's eyes were all on Andre-Louis, full of wonder and
commiseration, whilst Andre-Louis was staring down, in stupefied
fascination, at his mother.
M. de La Tour d'Azyr read the letter slowly through. Then very
quietly he replaced it. His next concern, being the product of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: we admire, so morality conforms social duty to rank, to position.
The peccadillo of a soldier is a crime in a general, and vice-
versa. Observances are not alike in all cases. They are not the
same for the gleaner in the field, for the girl who sews at
fifteen sous a day, for the daughter of a petty shopkeeper, for
the young bourgoise, for the child of a rich merchant, for the
heiress of a noble family, for a daughter of the house of Este. A
king must not stoop to pick up a piece of gold, but a laborer
ought to retrace his steps to find ten sous; though both are
equally bound to obey the laws of economy. A daughter of Este, who
is worth six millions, has the right to wear a broad-brimmed hat
Modeste Mignon |
