| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: serve to show that he can be docile toward intelligent
criticisms. About the same time he prepared for the French
Academy his work upon the historian Livy, which was crowned in
1855. Suffering then from overwork, he was obliged to make a
short journey to the Pyrenees, which he has since described in a
charming little volume, illustrated by Dore.
His subsequent works are a treatise on the French philosophers of
the present century, in which the vapid charlatanism of M. Cousin
is satisfactorily dealt with; a history of English literature in
five volumes; a humorous book on Paris; three volumes upon the
general theory of art; and two volumes of travels in Italy;
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Market-Place by Harold Frederic: what is it that your friend wants?"
"Only that I shall not be buried in a bankrupt's grave,"
the suppliant answered, with a kind of embittered eagerness
of utterance. "That I shall not see disgraced the honoured
name that my father and his father bequeathed to my care!"
Thorpe's large, composed countenance betrayed
a certain perplexity. "There must be a mistake,"
he observed. "I don't even know this name of yours.
I never heard it before."
The other's mobile face twisted itself in a grimace
of incredulity. He had a conspicuously wide mouth,
The Market-Place |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: have said, and am horrified to see how vulgar are the feelings
expressed! What I feel, every mother, alas! since the beginning must
have felt, I suppose, in the same way, and put into the same words.
You will laugh at me, as we do at the naive father who dilates on the
beauty and cleverness of his (of course) quite exceptional offspring.
But the refrain of my letter, darling, is this, and I repeat it: I am
as happy now as I used to be miserable. This grange--and is it not
going to be an estate, a family property?--has become my land of
promise. The desert is past and over. A thousand loves, darling pet.
Write to me, for now I can read without a tear the tale of your happy
love. Farewell.
|
