| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte: my relief, in the course of a year; in a state, it is true, of
scandalous ignorance as to Latin, as well as the more useful though
more neglected things: and this, doubtless, would all be laid to
the account of his education having been entrusted to an ignorant
female teacher, who had presumed to take in hand what she was
wholly incompetent to perform. I was not delivered from his
brother till full twelve months after, when he also was despatched
in the same state of disgraceful ignorance as the former.
Master Charles was his mother's peculiar darling. He was little
more than a year younger than John, but much smaller, paler, and
less active and robust; a pettish, cowardly, capricious, selfish
Agnes Grey |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: old man, rising to his feet and casting a flaming glance at his three
companions, "I'll arm my soldiers once more, and, with Maximilien at
my side, Normandy shall--"
"Sit down, my good seigneur," said Beauvouloir, uneasy at seeing the
duke give way to an excitement that was dangerous to a convalescent.
"Read it, Maitre Corbineau," said the old man, holding out the missive
to his confessor.
These four personages formed a tableau full of instruction upon human
life. The man-at-arms, the priest, and the physician, all three
standing before their master, who was seated in his arm-chair, were
casting pallid glances about them, each presenting one of those ideas
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: It was at Nancy, during one of those brief intervals of repose when
the Imperial armies were not on active service abroad, that Castanier
was so unlucky as to pay some attention to a young lady with whom he
danced at a ridotto, the provincial name for the entertainments often
given by the military to the townsfolk, or vice versa, in garrison
towns. A scheme for inveigling the gallant captain into matrimony was
immediately set on foot, one of those schemes by which mothers secure
accomplices in a human heart by touching all its motive springs, while
they convert all their friends into fellow-conspirators. Like all
people possessed by one idea, these ladies press everything into the
service of their great project, slowly elaborating their toils, much
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