| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Beauty and The Beast by Bayard Taylor: moved him to speak, and every sentence was armed with a sacred
authority. Asenath Mitchenor looked at him, over the low partition
which divided her and her sisters from the men's side, absorbed in
his rapt earnestness and truth. She forgot that other hearers
were present: he spake to her alone. A strange spell seemed to
seize upon her faculties and chain them at his feet: had he
beckoned to her, she would have arisen and walked to his side.
Friend Carter warmed and deepened as he went on. "I feel moved to-
day," he said,--"moved, I know not why, but I hope for some wise
purpose,--to relate to you an instance of Divine and human kindness
which has come directly to my own knowledge. A young man of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: address to the printer. Oh, we eat very hard-earned bread at the hands
of these speculators in black and white! I will give you a description
of these editors of magazines."
"When will the conversation begin?" Madame de Clagny asked of Dinah,
as one might ask, "When do the fireworks go off?"
"I fancied we should hear some amusing stories," said Madame Popinot
to her cousin, the Presidente Boirouge.
At this moment, when the good folks of Sancerre were beginning to
murmur like an impatient pit, Lousteau observed that Bianchon was lost
in meditation inspired by the wrapper round the proofs.
"What is it?" asked Etienne.
The Muse of the Department |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Rescue by Joseph Conrad: came, the ship was nowhere to be seen, and in the stockade where
the day before there were a hundred or more at our mercy, there
was no one. The chief, Hassim, was gone, and the lady who was a
princess in the country--and nobody knows what became of them
from that day to this. Sometimes traders from our parts talk of
having heard of them here, and heard of them there, but these are
the lies of men who go afar for gain. We who live in the country
believe that the ship sailed back into the clouds whence the
Lady's magic made her come. Did we not see the ship with our own
eyes? And as to Rajah Hassim and his sister, Mas Immada, some men
say one thing and some another, but God alone knows the truth."
The Rescue |
