| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Cousin Betty by Honore de Balzac: much, beloved poet, that you shall never regret your wife. At the same
time, if, like so many people, you want to keep up appearances, I
undertake to bring Hortense back to you in a very short time."
"Oh, if only that were possible!"
"I am certain of it," said Valerie, nettled. "Your poor father-in-law
is a man who is in every way utterly done for; who wants to appear as
though he could be loved, out of conceit, and to make the world
believe that he has a mistress; and he is so excessively vain on this
point, that I can do what I please with him. The Baroness is still so
devoted to her old Hector--I always feel as if I were talking of the
/Iliad/--that these two old folks will contrive to patch up matters
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: sure I don't know why. But what did you mean by it?"
"She be hungry."
Wolfe's eyes answered Mitchell, not the Doctor.
"Oh-h! But what a mistake you have made, my fine fellow! You
have given no sign of starvation to the body. It is strong,--
terribly strong. It has the mad, half-despairing gesture of
drowning."
Wolfe stammered, glanced appealingly at Mitchell, who saw the
soul of the thing, he knew. But the cool, probing eyes were
turned on himself now,--mocking, cruel, relentless.
"Not hungry for meat," the furnace-tender said at last.
Life in the Iron-Mills |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: his own nephew.
ELIZABETH. Master Shakespear: you speak sooth; yet cannot I in any
wise mend it. I dare not offend my unruly Puritans by making so lewd
a place as the playhouse a public charge; and there be a thousand
things to be done in this London of mine before your poetry can have
its penny from the general purse. I tell thee, Master Will, it will
be three hundred years and more before my subjects learn that man
cannot live by bread alone, but by every word that cometh from the
mouth of those whom God inspires. By that time you and I will be dust
beneath the feet of the horses, if indeed there be any horses then,
and men be still riding instead of flying. Now it may be that by then
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