| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: Japanese do not lack for opportunities to admire, nor do they turn
coldly away from what they are given. Indeed, they may be said to
live in a chronic state of flower-fever; but in spite of the vast
amount of admiration which they bestow on plants, it is not so much
the quantity of that admiration as the quality of it which is
remarkable. The intense appreciation shown the subject by the Far
Oriental is something whose very character seems strange to us, and
when in addition we consider that it permeates the entire people
from the commonest coolie to the most aesthetic courtier, it becomes
to our comprehension a state of things little short of inexplicable.
To call it artistic sensibility is to use too limited a term, for it
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac: Lucien's letter to be given to Jacques Collin, left the doctor and the
prisoner together under the guard of the warder, and went to fetch the
letter.
"Monsieur," said Jacques Collin, seeing the warder outside the door,
and not understanding why the governor had left them, "I should think
nothing of thirty thousand francs if I might send five lines to Lucien
de Rubempre."
"I will not rob you of your money," said Doctor Lebrun; "no one in
this world can ever communicate with him again----"
"No one?" said the prisoner in amazement. "Why?"
"He has hanged himself----"
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: which he had drunken, waited no longer to hold parley with the
hermit, who, in sooth, was of an obstinate and maliceful turn,
but, feeling the rain upon his shoulders, and fearing the rising
of the tempest, uplifted his mace outright, and, with blows, made
quickly room in the plankings of the door for his gauntleted
hand; and now pulling therewith sturdily, he so cracked, and
ripped, and tore all asunder, that the noise of the dry and
hollow-sounding wood alarmed and reverberated throughout the
forest."
At the termination of this sentence I started, and for a
moment, paused; for it appeared to me (although I at once
The Fall of the House of Usher |
