| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: put up with its little miseries? That is a text I have meditated
upon. Ah! though I said to my heart before I came to you, Forward!
Onward! it did not tremble and palpitate any the less on the way;
and I did not conceal from myself the stoniness of the path nor
the Alpine difficulties I had to encounter. I thought of all in my
long, long meditations. Do I not know that eminent men like you
have known the love they have inspired quite as well as that which
they themselves have felt; that they have had many romances in
their lives,--you particularly, who send forth those airy visions
of your soul that women rush to buy? Yet still I cried to myself,
"Onward!" because I have studied, more than you give me credit
Modeste Mignon |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: magic powers of the poor wretches whom they tortured to death, as
did, in many cases, the poor wretches themselves.
Everyone, almost, believed in magic. Take two cases. Read the
story which Benvenuto Cellini, the sculptor, tells in his life
(everyone should read it) of the magician whom he consults in the
Coliseum at Rome, and the figure which he sees as he walks back with
the magician, jumping from roof to roof along the tiles of the
houses.
And listen to this story, which Mr. Froude has dug up in his
researches. A Church commissioner at Oxford, at the beginning of
the Reformation, being unable to track an escaped heretic, "caused a
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Songs of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: Murders the babes of other men;
And like the beasts of wood and park,
Protects his whelps, defends his den.
Unshamed the narrow aim I hold;
I feed my sheep, patrol my fold;
Breathe war on wolves and rival flocks,
A pious outlaw on the rocks
Of God and morning; and when time
Shall bow, or rivals break me, climb
Where no undubbed civilian dares,
In my war harness, the loud stairs
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