| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe: St. Clare,--gay, easy, unpunctual, unpractical, sceptical,--in
short,--walking with impudent and nonchalant freedom over every
one of her most cherished habits and opinions?
To tell the truth, then, Miss Ophelia loved him. When a boy,
it had been hers to teach him his catechism, mend his clothes,
comb his hair, and bring him up generally in the way he should go;
and her heart having a warm side to it, Augustine had, as he usually
did with most people, monopolized a large share of it for himself,
and therefore it was that he succeeded very easily in persuading
her that the "path of duty" lay in the direction of New Orleans,
and that she must go with him to take care of Eva, and keep
Uncle Tom's Cabin |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: jungle by the confused, varied, and impenetrable aspect of the
buildings that line the shore, not according to a planned purpose,
but as if sprung up by accident from scattered seeds. Like the
matted growth of bushes and creepers veiling the silent depths of
an unexplored wilderness, they hide the depths of London's
infinitely varied, vigorous, seething life. In other river ports
it is not so. They lie open to their stream, with quays like broad
clearings, with streets like avenues cut through thick timber for
the convenience of trade. I am thinking now of river ports I have
seen - of Antwerp, for instance; of Nantes or Bordeaux, or even old
Rouen, where the night-watchmen of ships, elbows on rail, gaze at
The Mirror of the Sea |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Distinguished Provincial at Paris by Honore de Balzac: of his slighted soul. If Mme. de Bargeton had been in his power, he
could have cut her throat at that moment; he was a Fouquier-Tinville
gloating over the pleasure of sending Mme. d'Espard to the scaffold.
If only he could have put de Marsay to the torture with refinements of
savage cruelty! Canalis went by on horseback, bowing to the prettiest
women, his dress elegant, as became the most dainty of poets.
"Great heavens!" exclaimed Lucien. "Money, money at all costs! money
is the one power before which the world bends the knee." ("No!" cried
conscience, "not money, but glory; and glory means work! Work! that
was what David said.") "Great heavens! what am I doing here? But I
will triumph. I will drive along this avenue in a caleche with a
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