| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: jealousy. She wanted to live two lives--the life of the world and the
life of a literary woman; she accompanied Lousteau to every first-
night performance, and could detect in him many impulses of wounded
vanity, for her black attire rubbed off, as it were, on him, clouding
his brow, and sometimes leading him to be quite brutal. He was really
the woman of the two; and he had all a woman's exacting perversity; he
would reproach Dinah for the dowdiness of her appearance, even while
benefiting by the sacrifice, which to a mistress is so cruel--exactly
like a woman who, after sending a man through a gutter to save her
honor, tells him she "cannot bear dirt!" when he comes out.
Dinah then found herself obliged to gather up the rather loose reins
The Muse of the Department |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: think of chiefly; over the oilcloth of which, assumed to be land,
spread towns and villages and forts of wooden bricks; there are
steep square hills (geologically, volumes of Orr's CYCLOPAEDIA OF
THE SCIENCES) and the cracks and spaces of the floor and the bare
brown surround were the water channels and open sea of that
continent of mine.
I still remember with infinite gratitude the great-uncle to whom I
owe my bricks. He must have been one of those rare adults who have
not forgotten the chagrins and dreams of childhood. He was a
prosperous west of England builder; including my father he had three
nephews, and for each of them he caused a box of bricks to be made
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Heart of the West by O. Henry: an old recipe that's been in the family for seventy-five years. They
hand it down from one generation to another, but they don't give it
away to outsiders. If I could get that recipe, so I could make them
pancakes for myself on my ranch, I'd be a happy man,' says Bird.
"'Are you sure,' I says to him, 'that it ain't the hand that mixes the
pancakes that you're after?'
"'Sure,' says Jackson. 'Miss Learight is a mighty nice girl, but I can
assure you my intentions go no further than the gastro--' but he seen
my hand going down to my holster and he changed his similitude--'than
the desire to procure a copy of the pancake recipe,' he finishes.
"'You ain't such a bad little man,' says I, trying to be fair. 'I was
Heart of the West |
