| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ursula by Honore de Balzac: favor of two powerful protectors. If Savinien had entered the navy,
young and handsome as he was, with a famous name, and backed by the
influence of an admiral and a deputy, he might, at twenty-three years
of age, been a lieutenant; but his mother, unwilling that her only son
should go into either naval or military service, had kept him at
Nemours under the tutelage of one of the Abbe Chaperon's assistants,
hoping that she could keep him near her until her death. She meant to
marry him to a demoiselle d'Aiglemont with a fortune of twelve
thousand francs a year; to whose hand the name of Portenduere and the
farm at Bordieres enabled him to pretend. This narrow but judicious
plan, which would have carried the family to a second generation, was
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: respecter of the hedgerows; sought safety and found dignity in the
obvious path of conduct; and would palter with no simple and
recognised duty of his epoch. Of marriage in particular, of the
bond so formed, of the obligations incurred, of the debt men owe to
their children, he conceived in a truly antique spirit: not to
blame others, but to constrain himself. It was not to blame, I
repeat, that he held these views; for others, he could make a large
allowance; and yet he tacitly expected of his friends and his wife
a high standard of behaviour. Nor was it always easy to wear the
armour of that ideal.
Acting upon these beliefs; conceiving that he had indeed 'given
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Chance by Joseph Conrad: The parlourmaid managed to whisper to her without attracting
attention. The servants had been frightened by the invasion of that
wild girl in a muddy skirt and with wisps of damp hair sticking to
her pale cheeks. But they had seen her before. This was not the
first occasion, nor yet the last.
Directly she could slip away from her guests Mrs. Fyne ran upstairs.
"I found her in the night nursery crouching on the floor, her head
resting on the cot of the youngest of my girls. The eldest was
sitting up in bed looking at her across the room."
Only a nightlight was burning there. Mrs. Fyne raised her up, took
her over to Mr. Fyne's little dressing-room on the other side of the
Chance |
