| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Two Poets by Honore de Balzac: speculation of me, as a good many so-called benefactors do. If I make
a fortune, it will be entirely through you. That is not a lover's
speech, but sober, serious earnest. I ought to tell you about my
faults, for they are exceedingly bad ones in a man who has his way to
make. My character and habits and favorite occupations all unfit me
for business and money-getting, and yet we can only make money by some
kind of industry; if I have some faculty for the discovery of gold-
mines, I am singularly ill-adapted for getting the gold out of them.
But you who, for your brother's sake, went into the smallest details,
with a talent for thrift, and the patient watchfulness of the born man
of business, you will reap the harvest that I shall sow. The present
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: unpacked and unostentatiously laid on the writing-table in my
room, the guest-room which had been, I was informed in an
affectedly careless tone, awaiting me for some fifteen years or
so. It attracted no attention from the affectionate presence
hovering round the son of the favourite sister.
"You won't have many hours to yourself while you are staying with
me, brother," he said--this form of address borrowed from the
speech of our peasants being the usual expression of the highest
good humour in a moment of affectionate elation. "I shall be
always coming in for a chat."
As a matter of fact we had the whole house to chat in, and were
Some Reminiscences |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton: The woman was nothing to him--less than nothing--yet the blood
hummed in his ears and hung a cloud before him. He knew it was
only the stirring of the primal instinct, that it had no more to
do with his reasoning self than any reflex impulse of the body;
but that merely lowered anguish to disgust. Yes, it was disgust
he felt--almost a physical nausea. The poisonous fumes of life
were in his lungs. He was sick, unutterably sick. . . .
He drove home and went to his room. They were giving a little
dinner that night, and when he came down the guests were arriving.
He looked at his wife: her beauty was extraordinary, but it seemed
to him the beauty of a smooth sea along an unlit coast. She
|
