| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: HERE by the ample river's argent sweep,
Bosomed in tilth and vintage to her walls,
A tower-crowned Cybele in armored sleep
The city lies, fat plenty in her halls,
With calm, parochial spires that hold in fee
The friendly gables clustered at their base,
And, equipoised o'er tower and market-place,
The Gothic minster's winged immensity;
And in that narrow burgh, with equal mood,
Two placid hearts, to all life's good resigned,
Might, from the altar to the lych-gate, find
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: lashes which bordered the large and voluptuous eyelids. She was more
than a woman; she was a masterpiece! In that unhoped-for creation
there was love enough to enrapture all mankind, and beauties
calculated to satisfy the most exacting critic.
"Sarrasine devoured with his eyes what seemed to him Pygmalion's
statue descended from its pedestal. When La Zambinella sang, he was
beside himself. He was cold; then suddenly he felt a fire burning in
the secret depths of his being, in what, for lack of a better word, we
call the heart. He did not applaud, he said nothing; he felt a mad
impulse, a sort of frenzy of the sort that seizes us only at the age
when there is a something indefinably terrible and infernal in our
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: employ of the Government, as the Pope is infallible for good
Catholics. Something of this peculiar radiance invests everything
he does or says, or that is said or done in his name; the robe of
office covers everything and legalizes everything done by his
orders; does not his very title--His Excellency--vouch for the
purity of his intentions and the righteousness of his will, and
serve as a sort of passport and introduction to ideas that
otherwise would not be entertained for a moment? Pronounce the
words "His Excellency," and these poor folk will forthwith
proceed to do what they would not do for their own interests.
Passive obedience is as well known in a Government department as
Father Goriot |
