| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Confidence by Henry James: in our manners. Is this a salon to-night, Mrs. Vivian? Oh, do say
it is; I should like so much to see Captain Lovelock in a salon!
By good fortune he happened to have been dining with us;
so I told him he must bring me here. I told you I would explain,
Captain Lovelock," she added, "and I hope you think I have made it
clear."
The Captain had turned very red during this wandering discourse.
He sat pulling his beard and shifting the position which, with his
stalwart person, he had taken up on a little gilded chair--a piece
of furniture which every now and then gave a delicate creak.
"I always understand you well enough till you begin to explain,"
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: quality of school books, and the amenities of school life. That
Consciousness of Consent which, even in its present delusive form, has
enabled Democracy to oust tyrannical systems in spite of all its
vulgarities and stupidities and rancors and ineptitudes and
ignorances, would operate as powerfully among children as it does now
among grown-ups. No doubt the pedagogue would promptly turn
demagogue, and woo his scholars by all the arts of demagogy; but none
of these arts can easily be so dishonorable or mischievous as the art
of caning. And, after all, if larger liberties are attached to the
acquisition of knowledge, and the child finds that it can no more go
to the seaside without a knowledge of the multiplication and pence
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne:
"I have thought of death," said she -- " have wished for it --
would even have prayed for it, were it fit that such as I should
pray for anything. Yet, if death be in this cup, I bid thee
think again, ere thou beholdest me quaff it. See! it is even
now at my lips. "
"Drink, then," replied he, still with the same cold composure.
"Dost thou know me so little, Hester Prynne? Are my purposes
wont to be so shallow? Even if I imagine a scheme of vengeance,
what could I do better for my object than to let thee live --
The Scarlet Letter |
