| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James: unpleasant. It was the case with Mrs. Pocock that he had known HER
unpleasant, even though he had never known her not affable. She had
forms of affability that were in a high degree assertive; nothing
for instance had ever been more striking than that she was affable
to Jim.
What had told in any case at the window of the train was her high
clear forehead, that forehead which her friends, for some reason,
always thought of as a "brow"; the long reach of her eyes--it came
out at this juncture in such a manner as to remind him, oddly
enough, also of that of Waymarsh's; and the unusual gloss of her
dark hair, dressed and hatted, after her mother's refined example,
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Within the Tides by Joseph Conrad: with a foot in the two big F's.
Renouard lounging aimlessly in the room turned round: "And what
the devil's that?" he asked faintly.
"Why Fashion and Finance," explained the Editor. "That's how I
call it. There are the three R's at the bottom of the social
edifice and the two F's on the top. See?"
"Ha! Ha! Excellent! Ha! Ha!" Renouard laughed with stony eyes.
"And you proceed from one set to the other in this democratic age,"
the Editor went on with unperturbed complacency. "That is if you
are clever enough. The only danger is in being too clever. And I
think something of the sort happened here. That swell I am
Within the Tides |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: all the waters of Israel?"
It is with rivers as it is with people: the greatest are not always
the most agreeable, nor the best to live with. Diogenes must have
been an uncomfortable bedfellow: Antinous was bored to death in the
society of the Emperor Hadrian: and you can imagine much better
company for a walking trip than Napoleon Bonaparte. Semiramis was
a lofty queen, but I fancy that Ninus had more than one bad
quarter-of-an-hour with her: and in "the spacious times of great
Elizabeth" there was many a milkmaid whom the wise man would have
chosen for his friend, before the royal red-haired virgin. "I
confess," says the poet Cowley, "I love littleness almost in all
|
