| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: page of the prayer-book and turned to the old man whom the young man
had designated. What terrible complicity was in that glance? When the
young woman had cautiously examined the old seigneur, she drew a long
breath and raised her forehead, adorned with a precious jewel, toward
a picture of the Virgin; that simple movement, that attitude, the
moistened glance, revealed her life with imprudent naivete; had she
been wicked, she would certainly have dissimulated. The personage who
thus alarmed the lovers was a little old man, hunchbacked, nearly
bald, savage in expression, and wearing a long and discolored white
beard cut in a fan-tail. The cross of Saint-Michel glittered on his
breast; his coarse, strong hands, covered with gray hairs, which had
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: happiness, and thus lull you to forget your nobler destiny.
Believe me, the happiness they give is transitory; your great
career will endure. You know not with what perfidious cleverness
they contrive to satisfy their caprices, nor the art with which
they will convert your passing fancy into a love which ought to be
eternal. The day when they abandon you they will tell you that the
words, "I no longer love you," are a full justification of their
conduct, just as the words, "I love," justified their winning you;
they will declare that love is involuntary and not to be coerced.
Absurd! Believe me, dear, true love is eternal, infinite, always
like unto itself; it is equable, pure, without violent
The Lily of the Valley |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Oakdale Affair by Edgar Rice Burroughs: climb the fence he vaulted over the panel directly op-
posite the car. He had scarcely alighted upon the other
side when his eyes fell upon the disreputable figures of
two tramps stretched out upon their backs and snoring
audibly. Burton grinned.
"You two sure can go to sleep in a hurry," he said.
One of the men opened his eyes and sat up. When he
saw who it was that stood over him he grinned sheep-
ishly.
"Can't a guy lie down fer a minute in de bushes wid-
out bein' pinched?" he asked. The other man now sat up
The Oakdale Affair |
