| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: superficially at least--by a visible wound to his head; such a wound
as might have been produced--and as, on the final evidence, HAD been--
by a fatal slip, in the dark and after leaving the public house,
on the steepish icy slope, a wrong path altogether, at the bottom of
which he lay. The icy slope, the turn mistaken at night and in liquor,
accounted for much--practically, in the end and after the inquest and
boundless chatter, for everything; but there had been matters in his life--
strange passages and perils, secret disorders, vices more than suspected--
that would have accounted for a good deal more.
I scarce know how to put my story into words that shall be
a credible picture of my state of mind; but I was in these days
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: complaining. Our importance, our respectability in the world
must be affected by the wild volatility, the assurance and disdain
of all restraint which mark Lydia's character. Excuse me, for I
must speak plainly. If you, my dear father, will not take the
trouble of checking her exuberant spirits, and of teaching her
that her present pursuits are not to be the business of her life, she
will soon be beyond the reach of amendment. Her character will
be fixed, and she will, at sixteen, be the most determined flirt
that ever made herself or her family ridiculous; a flirt, too, in the
worst and meanest degree of flirtation; without any attraction
beyond youth and a tolerable person; and, from the ignorance
Pride and Prejudice |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: company, for instance, or a place in the Household, a chance, in
short, for the boy to win his spurs. My uncle the Archbishop suffered
a cruel martyrdom; I have fought for the cause without deserting the
camp with those who thought it their duty to follow the Princes. I
held that while the King was in France, his nobles should rally round
him.--Ah! well, no one gives us a thought; a Henry IV. would have
written before now to the d'Esgrignons, 'Come to me, my friends; we
have won the day!'--After all, we are something better than the
Troisvilles, yet here are two Troisvilles made peers of France; and
another, I hear, represents the nobles in the Chamber." (He took the
upper electoral colleges for assemblies of his own order.) "Really,
|
