| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland: the Empress Dowager as the goddess of mercy. Up to that time I
had not been accustomed to think of her as a goddess of mercy,
but he told me that she not infrequently copied the gospel of
that goddess with her own pen, had her portrait painted in the
form of the goddess which she used as a frontispiece, bound the
whole up in yellow silk or satin and gave it as a present to her
favourite officials. Of course I thought at once of my collection
of paintings, and said:
"How much I should like to have a picture of the Empress Dowager
as the goddess of mercy!"
"I'll paint one for you," said he.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: In the open country and especially in hilly places laid bare by the
wood-man's axe, the favourite sites are tufts of bracken, rock-
rose, lavender, everlasting and rosemary cropped close by the teeth
of the flocks. This is where I resort, as the isolation and
kindliness of the supports lend themselves to proceedings which
might not be tolerated by the unfriendly hedge.
Several times a week, in July, I go to study my Spiders on the
spot, at an early hour, before the sun beats fiercely on one's
neck. The children accompany me, each provided with an orange
wherewith to slake the thirst that will not be slow in coming.
They lend me their good eyes and supple limbs. The expedition
The Life of the Spider |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: when, in the flush of youth and of their ardor for art, they approach
a man of genius or a masterpiece. In all human sentiments there are,
as it were, primeval flowers bred of noble enthusiasms, which droop
and fade from year to year, till joy is but a memory and glory a lie.
Amid such fleeting emotions nothing so resembles love as the young
passion of an artist who tastes the first delicious anguish of his
destined fame and woe,--a passion daring yet timid, full of vague
confidence and sure discouragement. Is there a man, slender in
fortune, rich in his spring-time of genius, whose heart has not beaten
loudly as he approached a master of his art? If there be, that man
will forever lack some heart-string, some touch, I know not what, of
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