| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: to see that he must formerly have been of medium height. His excessive
thinness, the slenderness of his limbs, proved that he had always been
of slight build. He wore black silk breeches which hung about his
fleshless thighs in folds, like a lowered veil. An anatomist would
instinctively have recognized the symptoms of consumption in its
advanced stages, at sight of the tiny legs which served to support
that strange frame. You would have said that they were a pair of
cross-bones on a gravestone. A feeling of profound horror seized the
heart when a close scrutiny revealed the marks made by decrepitude
upon that frail machine.
He wore a white waistcoat embroidered with gold, in the old style, and
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith: Dorothy (taking her hand), you'll own I have been pretty fond of an old
wife.
MRS. HARDCASTLE. Lord, Mr. Hardcastle, you're for ever at your
Dorothys and your old wifes. You may be a Darby, but I'll be no Joan,
I promise you. I'm not so old as you'd make me, by more than one good
year. Add twenty to twenty, and make money of that.
HARDCASTLE. Let me see; twenty added to twenty makes just fifty and
seven.
MRS. HARDCASTLE. It's false, Mr. Hardcastle; I was but twenty when I
was brought to bed of Tony, that I had by Mr. Lumpkin, my first
husband; and he's not come to years of discretion yet.
She Stoops to Conquer |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy: Bathsheba dropped into a silence intended to ex-
press that she had opinions on the matter too abstruse
for Liddy's comprehension, rather than that she had
nothing to say.
"Dear me -- I had nearly forgotten the valentine
I bought yesterday." she exclaimed at length.
"Valentine! who for, miss?" said Liddy. "Farmer
Boldwood?"
It was the single name among all possible wrong
ones that just at this moment seemed to Bathsheba
more pertinent than the right.
Far From the Madding Crowd |
