| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells: too much about myself. You're the only person I've really given
good, straight, unselfish thought to. I'm making a mess of my
life--unless you come in and take it. I am. In you--if you can
love me--there is salvation. Salvation. I know what I am doing
better than you do. Think--think of that engagement!"
Their talk had come to eloquent silences that contradicted all he
had to say.
She stood up before him, smiling faintly.
"I think we've exhausted this discussion," she said.
"I think we have," he answered, gravely, and took her in his
arms, and smoothed her hair from her forehead, and very tenderly
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Camille by Alexandre Dumas: held out his hand to me, and continued:
"People would think it childish enough if they saw me lament like
this over a dead woman such as she; no one will ever know what I
made that woman suffer, how cruel I have been to her! how good,
how resigned she was! I thought it was I who had to forgive her,
and to-day I feel unworthy of the forgiveness which she grants
me. Oh, I would give ten years of my life to weep at her feet for
an hour!"
It is always difficult to console a sorrow that is unknown to
one, and nevertheless I felt so lively a sympathy for the young
man, he made me so frankly the confidant of his distress, that I
Camille |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: like to be long without reading some of him, and my delight in what
I do read never lessens. Of Shakespeare I have read all but
RICHARD III, HENRY VI., TITUS ANDRONICAS, and ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS
WELL; and these, having already made all suitable endeavour, I now
know that I shall never read - to make up for which unfaithfulness
I could read much of the rest for ever. Of Moliere - surely the
next greatest name of Christendom - I could tell a very similar
story; but in a little corner of a little essay these princes are
too much out of place, and I prefer to pay my fealty and pass on.
How often I have read GUY MANNERING, ROB ROY, OR REDGAUNTLET, I
have no means of guessing, having begun young. But it is either
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