| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Malbone: An Oldport Romance by Thomas Wentworth Higginson: that."
Malbone looked at Kate, who smiled with delight, and put her
hand on that of Hope. Indeed, she kept it there so long that
one or two passing ladies stopped their salutations in mid
career, and actually looked after them in amazement at their
attitude, as who should say, "What a very mixed society!"
So they drove on,--meeting four-in-hands, and tandems, and
donkey-carts, and a goat-cart, and basket-wagons driven by
pretty girls, with uncomfortable youths in or out of livery
behind. They met, had they but known it, many who were aiming
at notoriety, and some who had it; many who looked contented
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James: far as to say to him that she hadn't seen him for "ages." "Ages"
was the word she consciously and carefully, though a trifle
tremulously used; "ages" was exactly what she meant. To this he
replied in terms doubtless less anxiously selected, but perhaps on
that account not the less remarkable, "Oh yes, hasn't it been
awfully wet?" That was a specimen of their give and take; it fed
her fancy that no form of intercourse so transcendent and distilled
had ever been established on earth. Everything, so far as they
chose to consider it so, might mean almost anything. The want of
margin in the cage, when he peeped through the bars, wholly ceased
to be appreciable. It was a drawback only in superficial commerce.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: window pane fell with softened light on her girlish face. A pile of
shaped pieces of linen told me that she was a sempstress. She looked
like a spirit of solitude. When I held out the bill, I remarked that
she had not been at home when I called in the morning.
" ' "But the money was left with the porter's wife," said she.
" 'I pretended not to understand.
" ' "You go out early, mademoiselle, it seems."
" ' "I very seldom leave my room; but when you work all night, you are
obliged to take a bath sometimes."
" 'I looked at her. A glance told me all about her life. Here was a
girl condemned by misfortune to toil, a girl who came of honest farmer
Gobseck |
