| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: College de France, paid to talk down to the level of his
audience. He adjusts his cravat, and strikes various attitudes
for the benefit of the women in the first galleries at the Opera-
Comique. As he passes through all these successive initiations,
and breaks out of his sheath, the horizons of life widen around
him, and at length he grasps the plan of society with the
different human strata of which it is composed.
If he begins by admiring the procession of carriages on sunny
afternoons in the Champs-Elysees, he soon reaches the further
stage of envying their owners. Unconsciously, Eugene had served
his apprenticeship before he went back to Angouleme for the long
Father Goriot |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: But there's nothing else for it. I want no more.
You don't suppose I am afraid of what can be done to me?
Prison or gallows or whatever they may please.
But you don't see me coming back to explain such things
to an old fellow in a wig and twelve respectable tradesmen,
do you? What can they know whether I am guilty or not--
or of WHAT I am guilty, either? That's my affair.
What does the Bible say? `Driven off the face of the earth.'
Very well, I am off the face of the earth now. As I came
at night so I shall go."
"Impossible!" I murmured. "You can't."
The Secret Sharer |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Mother by Owen Wister: Michigan--though this would have made no difference. Ethel had been
accustomed to a house several stories high, with hot and cold water in
most of them, and somebody to answer the door-bell."
"The door-bell!" exclaimed Ethel. "I could have gone without hearing
that."
"Yes, Ethel, only to hear the welkin ring would have been enough for you.
I know that you are sincere in thinking so. And the ringing welkin is all
we should have heard in Michigan. But the more truly a man loves a girl,
the less can he bear taking her from an easy to a hard life. I am sure
that all the men here agree with me."
There was a murmur and a nod from the men, and also from Mrs. Davenport.
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