| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Rezanov by Gertrude Atherton: inner life breathed the simplicity and purity of the
elemental roses that hovered about her in his
thoughts. Her very unsusceptibility made the game
more dangerous; if it piqued him--and he aspired
to be no more than human--he either should have
to marry her, or nurse a sore spot in his conscience
for the rest of his life; and for neither alternative
had he the least relish.
He dismissed the subject at last with an impatient
shrug. Perhaps he was a conceited ass, as his Eng-
lish friends would say; perhaps the Governor would
Rezanov |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: other spheres that he knew afar by intuitive perception, a clear and
hopeless knowledge. His soul dried up within him, for he hungered and
thirsted after things that can neither be drunk nor eaten, but for
which he could not choose but crave. His lips, like Melmoth's, burned
with desire; he panted for the unknown, for he knew all things.
The mechanism and the scheme of the world was apparent to him, and its
working interested him no longer; he did not long disguise the
profound scorn that makes of a man of extraordinary powers a sphinx
who knows everything and says nothing, and sees all things with an
unmoved countenance. He felt not the slightest wish to communicate his
knowledge to other men. He was rich with all the wealth of the world,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: sick, had very great inconveniences in it, and some that were very
tragical, and which merited to have been considered if there had been
room for it. But it was authorised by a law, it had the public good in
view as the end chiefly aimed at, and all the private injuries that were
done by the putting it in execution must be put to the account of the
public benefit.
It is doubtful to this day whether, in the whole, it contributed
anything to the stop of the infection; and indeed I cannot say it did, for
nothing could run with greater fury and rage than the infection did
when it was in its chief violence, though the houses infected were shut
up as exactly and as effectually as it was possible. Certain it is that if
A Journal of the Plague Year |
