The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lady Susan by Jane Austen: yet quite decided on the manner of bringing it about. I should not chuse to
have the business brought on here, and canvassed by the wise heads of Mr.
and Mrs. Vernon; and I cannot just now afford to go to town. Miss Frederica
must therefore wait a little.
Yours ever,
S. VERNON.
XX
MRS. VERNON TO LADY DE COURCY
Churchhill
We have a very unexpected guest with us at present, my dear Mother: he
arrived yesterday. I heard a carriage at the door, as I was sitting with my
 Lady Susan |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson: and again looked round upon my fellow-prisoners, and felt my anger
rise, and choked upon tears, to behold them thus parodied. The
more part, as I have said, were peasants, somewhat bettered perhaps
by the drill-sergeant, but for all that ungainly, loutish fellows,
with no more than a mere barrack-room smartness of address: indeed,
you could have seen our army nowhere more discreditably represented
than in this Castle of Edinburgh. And I used to see myself in
fancy, and blush. It seemed that my more elegant carriage would
but point the insult of the travesty. And I remembered the days
when I wore the coarse but honourable coat of a soldier; and
remembered further back how many of the noble, the fair, and the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: lively but innocent curiosity, it assumed a look of gentle sympathy as
the stranger receded from view, like a last relation following in a
funeral train.
The heat of the weather was so great, and the gentleman was so absent-
minded, that he had taken off his hat and forgotten to put it on again
as he went down the squalid street. Caroline could see the stern look
given to his countenance by the way the hair was brushed from his
forehead. The strong impression, devoid of charm, made on the girl by
this man's appearance was totally unlike any sensation produced by the
other passengers who used the street; for the first time in her life
she was moved to pity for some one else than herself and her mother;
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