| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp: comforted me to see it on the chair beside my bed, as my nights
were anything but placid, it was all so strange, and there were such
queer creakings and other noises. I used to lie awake for hours,
startled out of a light sleep by the cracking of some board,
and listen to the indifferent snores of the girl in the next room.
In the morning, of course, I was as brave as a lion and much amused
at the cold perspirations of the night before; but even the nights
seem to me now to have been delightful, and myself like those historic
boys who heard a voice in every wind and snatched a fearful joy.
I would gladly shiver through them all over again for the sake of
the beautiful purity of the house, empty of servants and upholstery.
Elizabeth and her German Garden |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: and really "go into" figures.
It amused, it verily quite charmed him; and, by the same stroke, it
amused, and even more, Alice Staverton, though perhaps charming her
perceptibly less. She wasn't, however, going to be better-off for
it, as HE was - and so astonishingly much: nothing was now likely,
he knew, ever to make her better-off than she found herself, in the
afternoon of life, as the delicately frugal possessor and tenant of
the small house in Irving Place to which she had subtly managed to
cling through her almost unbroken New York career. If he knew the
way to it now better than to any other address among the dreadful
multiplied numberings which seemed to him to reduce the whole place
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy: "But I fear otherwise, from what you say."
"We'll hope, nevertheless," said Mr Clare. "And I
continue to pray for him, though on this side of the
grave we shall probably never meet again. But, after
all, one of those poor words of mine may spring up in
his heart as a good seed some day."
Now, as always, Clare's father was sanguine as a child;
and though the younger could not accept his parent's
narrow dogma he revered his practice, and recognized
the hero under the pietist. Perhaps he revered his
father's practice even more now than ever, seeing that,
Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman |
