| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: just, and on his part very kind; that I would discourse with the
men upon the point now, when I came to them; and I knew no reason
why they should scruple to let him marry them all, which I knew
well enough would be granted to be as authentic and valid in
England as if they were married by one of our own clergymen.
I then pressed him to tell me what was the second complaint which
he had to make, acknowledging that I was very much his debtor for
the first, and thanking him heartily for it. He told me he would
use the same freedom and plainness in the second, and hoped I would
take it as well; and this was, that notwithstanding these English
subjects of mine, as he called them, had lived with these women
Robinson Crusoe |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Daisy Miller by Henry James: of him would help him to think more lightly of her, and to be able
to think more lightly of her would make her much less perplexing.
But Daisy, on this occasion, continued to present herself as an
inscrutable combination of audacity and innocence.
She had been walking some quarter of an hour, attended by her
two cavaliers, and responding in a tone of very childish gaiety,
as it seemed to Winterbourne, to the pretty speeches
of Mr. Giovanelli, when a carriage that had detached
itself from the revolving train drew up beside the path.
At the same moment Winterbourne perceived that his friend
Mrs. Walker--the lady whose house he had lately left--
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: many to chuse before him."
"Do you think the church itself never chosen, then?"
"_Never_ is a black word. But yes, in the _never_
of conversation, which means _not_ _very_ _often_,
I do think it. For what is to be done in the church?
Men love to distinguish themselves, and in either of the other
lines distinction may be gained, but not in the church.
A clergyman is nothing."
"The _nothing_ of conversation has its gradations, I hope,
as well as the _never_. A clergyman cannot be high in
state or fashion. He must not head mobs, or set the ton
Mansfield Park |
