| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: Miss Crawford accepted the part very readily; and soon after
Miss Bertram's return from the Parsonage, Mr. Rushworth
arrived, and another character was consequently cast.
He had the offer of Count Cassel and Anhalt, and at first
did not know which to chuse, and wanted Miss Bertram
to direct him; but upon being made to understand the
different style of the characters, and which was which,
and recollecting that he had once seen the play in London,
and had thought Anhalt a very stupid fellow, he soon
decided for the Count. Miss Bertram approved the decision,
for the less he had to learn the better; and though she
Mansfield Park |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: with me, and never with anyone else, he seemed to regard it as an
indiscretion and to repent of it afterwards. If humanity and
sociability are in some sort a religion, Gobseck might be ranked as an
infidel; but though I set myself to study him, I must confess, to my
shame, that his real nature was impenetrable up to the very last. I
even felt doubts at times as to his sex. If all usurers are like this
one, I maintain that they belong to the neuter gender.
"Did he adhere to his mother's religion? Did he look on Gentiles as
his legitimate prey? Had he turned Roman Catholic, Lutheran,
Mahometan, Brahmin, or what not? I never knew anything whatsoever
about his religious opinions, and so far as I could see, he was
Gobseck |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: of the serious artist to employ were yet, if we had the power
to trace them to their springs, indications of a delicacy of
the sense finer than we conceive, and hints of ancient
harmonies in nature. This ignorance at least is largely
irremediable. We shall never learn the affinities of beauty,
for they lie too deep in nature and too far back in the
mysterious history of man. The amateur, in consequence, will
always grudgingly receive details of method, which can be
stated but never can wholly be explained; nay, on the
principle laid down in HUDIBRAS, that
'Still the less they understand,
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