| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: Selden continued to look at her; then he drew his cigarette-case
from his pocket and slowly lit a cigarette. It seemed to him
necessary, at that moment, to proclaim, by some habitual gesture
of this sort, his recovered hold on the actual: he had an almost
puerile wish to let his companion see that, their flight over, he
had landed on his feet.
She waited while the spark flickered under his curved palm; then
he held out the cigarettes to her.
She took one with an unsteady hand, and putting it to her lips,
leaned forward to draw her light from his. In the indistinctness
the little red gleam lit up the lower part of her face, and he
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Emma by Jane Austen: should display in every transaction of his life."
"Nay, dear Emma, now I must take his part; for though he has been
wrong in this instance, I have known him long enough to answer
for his having many, very many, good qualities; and--"
"Good God!" cried Emma, not attending to her.--"Mrs. Smallridge, too!
Jane actually on the point of going as governess! What could he
mean by such horrible indelicacy? To suffer her to engage herself--
to suffer her even to think of such a measure!"
"He knew nothing about it, Emma. On this article I can fully
acquit him. It was a private resolution of hers, not communicated
to him--or at least not communicated in a way to carry conviction.--
Emma |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: her piano at hand and each of them familiar with it, they went over
passages of the opera together. It chanced to be on one of these
occasions, however, that he reminded her of her not having answered
a certain question he had put to her during the talk that had taken
place between them on her last birthday. "What is it that saves
YOU?"--saved her, he meant, from that appearance of variation from
the usual human type. If he had practically escaped remark, as she
pretended, by doing, in the most important particular, what most
men do--find the answer to life in patching up an alliance of a
sort with a woman no better than himself--how had she escaped it,
and how could the alliance, such as it was, since they must suppose
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