| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: daughter, but she covered them with kisses, and he drew them away
again. Scandalous, isn't it? And his great booby of a son came in
and took no notice of his sister."
"What inhuman wretches they must be!" said Father Goriot.
"And then they both went out of the room," Mme. Couture went on,
without heeding the worthy vermicelli maker's exclamation;
"father and son bowed to me, and asked me to excuse them on
account of urgent business! That is the history of our call.
Well, he has seen his daughter at any rate. How he can refuse to
acknowledge her I cannot think, for they are as alike as two
peas."
Father Goriot |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Contrast by Royall Tyler: the time it first appeared, the drama here had met with
few friends, and but little favor.
A single company of English players, the so-called
first "American Company," after a long and bitter
struggle with the intolerance and prejudices of the Puri-
tan and Quakers, had attained some slight favor in New-
York, Philadelphia, and some of the Southern cities;
but in New England the prohibitory laws against all the-
atrical amusements were still in force and were rigidly
executed. The Continental Congress, while not abso-
lutely suppressing,<4> had set its seal of condemnation
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: grumpy, and seem to resent the mere sound of your voice as an
injury and an insult.
But a grumpy recluse cannot worry his subordinates: whereas the
man in whom the sense of duty is strong (or, perhaps, only the
sense of self-importance), and who persists in airing on deck his
moroseness all day - and perhaps half the night - becomes a
grievous infliction. He walks the poop darting gloomy glances, as
though he wished to poison the sea, and snaps your head off
savagely whenever you happen to blunder within earshot. And these
vagaries are the harder to bear patiently, as becomes a man and an
officer, because no sailor is really good-tempered during the first
The Mirror of the Sea |
