The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Coxon Fund by Henry James: intellect." My young lady looked not quite satisfied at this, but
as I wasn't prepared for another question I hastily pursued: "The
sight of a great suspended swinging crystal--huge lucid lustrous, a
block of light--flashing back every impression of life and every
possibility of thought!"
This gave her something to turn over till we had passed out to the
dusky porch of the hall, in front of which the lamps of a quiet
brougham were almost the only thing Saltram's treachery hadn't
extinguished. I went with her to the door of her carriage, out of
which she leaned a moment after she had thanked me and taken her
seat. Her smile even in the darkness was pretty. "I do want to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: critics, but from which the friction of mere personal intercourse
was not the sort of process to extract a revealing spark. He
accepted without a question both his fever and his chill, and the
only thing he touched with judgment was this convenience of my
friendship. He doubtless told me his simple story, but the matter
comes back in a kind of sense of my being rather the mouthpiece, of
my having had to put it together for him. He took it from me in
this form without a groan, and I gave it him quite as it came; he
took it again and again, spending his odd half-hours with me as if
for the very purpose of learning how idiotically he was in love.
He told me I made him see things: to begin with, hadn't I first
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Two Brothers by Honore de Balzac: was to work for a living, he laid it aside to make copies of the old
masters for the dealers; thus he penetrated the secrets of their
processes, and his brush is therefore one of the best trained of the
modern school. The shrewd sense of an artist led him to conceal the
profits he was beginning to lay by from his mother and Madame
Descoings, aware that each had her road to ruin,--the one in Philippe,
the other in the lottery. This astuteness is seldom wanting among
painters; busy for days together in the solitude of their studios,
engaged in work which, up to a certain point, leaves the mind free,
they are in some respects like women,--their thoughts turn about the
little events of life, and they contrive to get at their hidden
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