| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James: found much personal profit in exaggerating the other's original
grandeur. Mrs. Jordan was ten years the older, but her young
friend was struck with the smaller difference this now made: it
had counted otherwise at the time when, much more as a friend of
her mother's, the bereaved lady, without a penny of provision and
with stopgaps, like their own, all gone, had, across the sordid
landing on which the opposite doors of the pair of scared miseries
opened and to which they were bewilderedly bolted, borrowed coals
and umbrellas that were repaid in potatoes and postage-stamps. It
had been a questionable help, at that time, to ladies submerged,
floundering, panting, swimming for their lives, that they were
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: less secluded, less confidential, as it were, than the one
in the arbor; and we were still sitting there when I heard
midnight ring out from those clear bells of Venice which
vibrate with a solemnity of their own over the lagoon and hold
the air so much more than the chimes of other places.
We were together more than an hour, and our interview gave,
as it struck me, a great lift to my undertaking.
Miss Tita accepted the situation without a protest;
she had avoided me for three months, yet now she treated me
almost as if these three months had made me an old friend.
If I had chosen I might have inferred from this that though
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: an itch for acting so strong among young people, that he
could hardly out-talk the interest of his hearers.
From the first casting of the parts to the epilogue
it was all bewitching, and there were few who did
not wish to have been a party concerned, or would have
hesitated to try their skill. The play had been Lovers'
Vows, and Mr. Yates was to have been Count Cassel.
"A trifling part," said he, "and not at all to my taste,
and such a one as I certainly would not accept again;
but I was determined to make no difficulties.
Lord Ravenshaw and the duke had appropriated the only two
Mansfield Park |
