| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Aesop's Fables by Aesop: the young men come up and speak to me! Polly Shaw will be that
jealous; but I don't care. I shall just look at her and toss my
head like this. As she spoke she tossed her head back, the Pail
fell off it, and all the milk was spilt. So she had to go home
and tell her mother what had occurred.
"Ah, my child," said the mother,
"Do not count your chickens before they are hatched."
The Cat-Maiden
The gods were once disputing whether it was possible for a
living being to change its nature. Jupiter said "Yes," but Venus
said "No." So, to try the question, Jupiter turned a Cat into a
Aesop's Fables |
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: those noisy detonations, the result of which is to fling upon the
carpet or the clothes a little coal or ember, the trifling nucleus of
a conflagration. Heat or fire releases, they say, a bubble of air left
in the heart of the wood by a gnawing worm. "Inde amor, inde
burgundus." We tremble when we see the structure we had so carefully
erected between the logs rolling down like an avalanche. Oh! to build
and stir and play with fire when we love is the material development
of our thoughts.
It was at this moment that I entered the room. Rastignac gave a jump
and said:--
"Ah! there you are, dear Horace; how long have you been here?"
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Ursula by Honore de Balzac: which he gave to his disciples, was no better apprehended by the
Church than by the disciples of Jean-Jacques, Voltaire, Locke, and
Condillac. The Encyclopedists and the clergy were equally averse to
the old human power which they took to be new. The miracles of the
convulsionaries, suppressed by the Church and smothered by the
indifference of scientific men (in spite of the precious writings of
the Councilor, Carre de Montgeron) were the first summons to make
experiments with those human fluids which give power to employ certain
inward forces to neutralize the sufferings caused by outward agents.
But to do this it was necessary to admit the existence of fluids
intangible, invisible, imponderable, three negative terms in which the
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