| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: "IT ISN'T AS IF YOU HADN'T TRIED ALL KINDS."
No--he had tried all kinds: comedy, tragedy, prose and verse, the
light curtain-raiser, the short sharp drama, the bourgeois-
realistic and the lyrical-romantic--finally deciding that he
would no longer "prostitute his talent" to win popularity, but
would impose on the public his own theory of art in the form of
five acts of blank verse. Yes, he had offered them everything--
and always with the same result.
Ten years of it--ten years of dogged work and unrelieved failure.
The ten years from forty to fifty--the best ten years of his
life! And if one counted the years before, the silent years of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: with chilly brightness, after a long storm, two children asked
leave of their mother to run out and play in the new-fallen snow.
The elder child was a little girl, whom, because she was of a
tender and modest disposition, and was thought to be very
beautiful, her parents, and other people who were familiar with
her, used to call Violet. But her brother was known by the style
and title of Peony, on account of the ruddiness of his broad and
round little phiz, which made everybody think of sunshine and
great scarlet flowers. The father of these two children, a
certain Mr. Lindsey, it is important to say, was an excellent but
exceedingly matter-of-fact sort of man, a dealer in hardware, and
The Snow Image |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lady Susan by Jane Austen: Vernons, and when I write to him it must be under cover to you.
Ever yours,
S. VERNON.
VI
MRS. VERNON TO MR. DE COURCY
Churchhill.
Well, my dear Reginald, I have seen this dangerous creature, and must
give you some description of her, though I hope you will soon be able to
form your own judgment she is really excessively pretty; however you may
choose to question the allurements of a lady no longer young, I must, for
my own part, declare that I have seldom seen so lovely a woman as Lady
Lady Susan |
