| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: overworked; but somehow you always see in them the historical
representative of the serf of yore, and think not so much of present
times, which may be prosperous enough, as of the old days when the
peasant was taxed beyond possibility of payment, and lived, in
Michelet's image, like a hare between two furrows. These very people
now weeding their patch under the broad sunset, that very man and his
wife, it seems to us, have suffered all the wrongs of France. It is
they who have been their country's scapegoat for long ages; they who,
generation after generation, have sowed and not reaped, reaped and
another has garnered; and who have now entered into their reward, and
enjoy their good things in their turn. For the days are gone by when
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Heroes by Charles Kingsley: beauty and wisdom, and Athene skill in all the arts; but when
they came to their wedding, the Harpies snatched them both
away, and gave them to be slaves to the Erinnues, and live in
horror all their days. And now they haunt me, and my people,
and the Bosphorus, with fearful storms; and sweep away our
food from off our tables, so that we starve in spite of all
our wealth.'
Then up rose Zetes and Calais, the winged sons of the North-
wind, and said, 'Do you not know us, Phineus, and these wings
which grow upon our backs?' And Phineus hid his face in
terror; but he answered not a word.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: or the sheets of air, for we took those slight phenomena as the
visible translation of our double thought. Who has never tasted in
wedded love that moment of illimitable joy when the soul seems freed
from the trammels of flesh, and finds itself restored, as it were, to
the world whence it came? Are there not hours when feelings clasp each
other and fly upward, like children taking hands and running, they
scarce know why? It was thus we went along.
At the moment when the village roofs began to show like a faint gray
line on the horizon, we met a fisherman, a poor man returning to
Croisic. His feet were bare; his linen trousers ragged round the
bottom; his shirt of common sailcloth, and his jacket tatters. This
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