| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Market-Place by Harold Frederic: your telling him your people were booksellers. He only
got back here in England yesterday or the day before.
He said he didn't know what you'd been doing since you
left Mexico. He didn't even know whether you were in England
or not!"
Thorpe had been looking with abstracted intentness at
a set of green-bound cheap British poets just at one
side of his sister's head. "You must find that card!"
he told her now, with a vague severity in his voice.
"I know the name well enough, but I want to see what
he's written. Was it his address, do you remember? The
The Market-Place |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: How in the world could I have supposed her capable of getting out
of bed by herself? I failed to see Miss Tita before going; I only saw
the donna, whom I entrusted with a note for her younger mistress.
In this note I mentioned that I should be absent but for a few days.
I went to Treviso, to Bassano, to Castelfranco; I took walks and drives and
looked at musty old churches with ill-lighted pictures and spent hours seated
smoking at the doors of cafes, where there were flies and yellow curtains,
on the shady side of sleepy little squares. In spite of these pastimes,
which were mechanical and perfunctory, I scantily enjoyed my journey:
there was too strong a taste of the disagreeable in my life.
I had been devilish awkward, as the young men say, to be found by Miss
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Brother of Daphne by Dornford Yates: do. Two of the puppies loped off to meet her. The
long-suffering way in which she permitted them to mouth her
argued that she was accustomed to being the kindly butt of their
exuberance. The third turned to follow his fellows, hesitated,
caught my lady's eye, and rushed back to his new-found friend.
That's the one for me," said I. "Give me good judgment. I shall
call him Paris."
"Appropriately. Off with the old love and on with the new. I'm
sure he's faithless, and I expect the bulldog's been awfully kind
to him, haven't you, dear?" She patted the snuffling beauty.
"Besides, I gave him the glad eye, which wasn't fair."
The Brother of Daphne |
