| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Odyssey by Homer: look after my affairs I should be both more respected and should
show a better presence to the world. As it is, I am oppressed
with care, and with the afflictions which heaven has seen fit to
heap upon me. The chiefs from all our islands--Dulichium, Same,
and Zacynthus, as also from Ithaca itself, are wooing me against
my will and are wasting my estate. I can therefore show no
attention to strangers, nor suppliants, nor to people who say
that they are skilled artisans, but am all the time
broken-hearted about Ulysses. They want me to marry again at
once, and I have to invent stratagems in order to deceive them.
In the first place heaven put it in my mind to set up a great
The Odyssey |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton: mother had given her a gold locket and she had sat up in bed in the
dark to draw it from its hiding-place beneath her night-gown.
At length a dread of Evelina's return began to mingle with
these musings. How could she meet her younger sister's eye without
betraying what had happened? She felt as though a visible glory
lay on her, and she was glad that dusk had fallen when Evelina
entered. But her fears were superfluous. Evelina, always self-
absorbed, had of late lost all interest in the simple happenings of
the shop, and Ann Eliza, with mingled mortification and relief,
perceived that she was in no danger of being cross-questioned as to
the events of the afternoon. She was glad of this; yet there was
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad: garden, enough to scare all the little birds away. I suppose one
or several of them, having influence with the press, did it. But
the gossip didn't stop, and the name stuck, too, since it conveyed
a very certain and very significant sort of fact, and of course the
Venetian episode was talked about in the houses frequented by my
mother. It was talked about from a royalist point of view with a
kind of respect. It was even said that the inspiration and the
resolution of the war going on now over the Pyrenees had come out
from that head. . . Some of them talked as if she were the guardian
angel of Legitimacy. You know what royalist gush is like."
Mr. Blunt's face expressed sarcastic disgust. Mills moved his head
The Arrow of Gold |
