| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: settled; also that of a day's work and of piece-work. Tonsard, a
sovereign judge in such matters, gave his advice and opinion while
drinking with his guests. Soulanges, according to a saying in these
parts, was a town for society and amusement only, while Blangy was a
business borough; crushed, however, by the great commercial centre of
Ville-aux-Fayes, which had become in the last twenty-five years the
capital of this flourishing valley. The cattle and grain market was
held at Blangy, in the public square, and the prices there obtained
served as a tariff for the whole arrondissement.
By staying in the house and doing no out-door work, La Tonsard
continued fresh and fair and dimpled, in comparison with the women who
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson: you will blow the gaff on the whole business?'
He answered me Yes with eager asseverations.
'I know Monsieur de Saint-Yves is in it; it was through his papers
we traced you,' I said. 'Do you consent to make a clean breast of
the others?'
'I do - I will!' he cried. 'The 'ole crew of 'em; there's good
names among 'em. I'll be king's evidence.'
'So that all shall hang except yourself? You damned villain!' I
broke out. 'Understand at once that I am no spy or thief-taker. I
am a kinsman of Monsieur de St. Yves - here in his interest. Upon
my word, you have put your foot in it prettily, Mr. Burchell Fenn!
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Golden Threshold by Sarojini Naidu: philosophy, though it appears merely an epicurean doctrine:
'Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die.' I have gone
through so many yesterdays when I strove with Death that I have
realised to its full the wisdom of that sentence; and it is to me
not merely a figure of speech, but a literal fact. Any to-morrow
I might die. It is scarcely two months since I came back from
the grave: is it worth while to be anything but radiantly glad?
Of all things that life or perhaps my temperament has given me I
prize the gift of laughter as beyond price."
Her desire, always, was to be "a wild free thing of the air like
the birds, with a song in my heart." A spirit of too much fire
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