| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: torpid and reluctant utterance. "Do with me as you will!"
She knelt down upon the platform where they were standing and
lifted her clasped hands to the sky. The dull, gray weight of
clouds made it invisible; but it was no hour for disbelief,--no
juncture this to question that there was a sky above, and an
Almighty Father looking from it!
"O God!"--ejaculated poor, gaunt Hepzibah,--then paused a moment,
to consider what her prayer should be,--"O God,--our Father,
--are we not thy children? Have mercy on us!"
XVIII Governor Pyncheon
JUDGE PYNCHEON, while his two relatives have fled away with such
House of Seven Gables |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac: age,--a period of life when most women discover that they are the
dupes of social laws.
The marquis is a rather insignificant man. He stands well at court;
his good qualities are as negative as his defects; the former can no
more make him a reputation for virtue than the latter can give him the
sort of glamor cast by vice. As deputy, he never speaks, but he votes
RIGHT. He behaves in his own home as he does in the Chamber.
Consequently, he is held to be one of the best husbands in France.
Though not susceptible of lively interest, he never scolds, unless, to
be sure, he is kept waiting. His friends have named him "dull
weather,"--aptly enough, for there is neither clear light nor total
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Memorabilia by Xenophon: of the friend in like condition, and if both should die, he will show
signs of deep annoyance at the death of his domestic, which, as he
reflects, is a positive loss to him; but as regards his friend his
position is in no wise materially affected, and thus, though he would
never dream of leaving his other possessions disregarded and ill cared
for, friendship's mute appeal is met with flat indifference.[1]
[1] Or, "the cry of a friend for careful tending falls on deaf ears."
Or to take (said he) a crowning instance:[2] with regard to ordinary
possessions, however multifarious these may be, most people are at
least acquainted with their number, but if you ask a man to enumerate
his friends, who are not so very many after all perhaps, he cannot; or
The Memorabilia |
