| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen: and such an invitation the most gratifying to her
feelings! It was an advantage that could not be too
gratefully acknowledged, nor too speedily made use of;
and the visit to Lady Middleton, which had not before had
any precise limits, was instantly discovered to have been
always meant to end in two days' time.
When the note was shown to Elinor, as it was within ten
minutes after its arrival, it gave her, for the first time,
some share in the expectations of Lucy; for such a mark
of uncommon kindness, vouchsafed on so short an acquaintance,
seemed to declare that the good-will towards her arose
Sense and Sensibility |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: case of the proletariat it is brought about by the cruel see-saw of
the material elaborations perpetually required from the despotism of
the aristocratic "/I will/." Here, too, then, in order to obey that
universal master, pleasure or gold, they must devour time, hasten
time, find more than four-and-twenty hours in the day and night, waste
themselves, slay themselves, and purchase two years of unhealthy
repose with thirty years of old age. Only, the working-man dies in
hospital when the last term of his stunted growth expires; whereas the
man of the middle class is set upon living, and lives on, but in a
state of idiocy. You will meet him, with his worn, flat old face, with
no light in his eyes, with no strength in his limbs, dragging himself
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Time Machine by H. G. Wells: have been mistaken. Then I got a big pebble from the river, and
came and hammered till I had flattened a coil in the decorations,
and the verdigris came off in powdery flakes. The delicate
little people must have heard me hammering in gusty outbreaks a
mile away on either hand, but nothing came of it. I saw a crowd
of them upon the slopes, looking furtively at me. At last, hot
and tired, I sat down to watch the place. But I was too restless
to watch long; I am too Occidental for a long vigil. I could
work at a problem for years, but to wait inactive for twenty-four
hours--that is another matter.
`I got up after a time, and began walking aimlessly through
The Time Machine |
