| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: action, if, in short, you still think your right to the property
equitable (oh! how I long to persuade myself that you are
blameless), consider and decide by listening to the voice of your
conscience; act wholly and solely from yourself. A man who loves a
woman sincerely, as you love me, respects the sanctity of her
trust in him too deeply to dishonor himself.
"'I blame myself now for what I have written; a word might have
sufficed, and I have preached to you! Scold me; I wish to be
scolded,--but not much, only a little. Dear, between us two the
power is yours--you alone should perceive your own faults.'"
"Well, uncle?" said Octave, whose eyes were full of tears.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe: laugh; "who are they, Cassy?"
Cassy raised her sharp, black eyes, and looked in the face of
Legree, with an expression that went through his bones, as she
said, "To be sure, Simon, who are they? I'd like to have _you_
tell me. You don't know, I suppose!"
With an oath, Legree struck at her with his riding-whip; but
she glided to one side, and passed through the door, and looking
back, said, "If you'll sleep in that room, you'll know all about it.
Perhaps you'd better try it!" and then immediately she shut and
locked the door.
Legree blustered and swore, and threatened to break down the
Uncle Tom's Cabin |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne: out thy pictures in the shapes of so many angels of light, 'tis a
shame to break with thee.
When we had got to the door of the Remise, she withdrew her hand
from across her forehead, and let me see the original: - it was a
face of about six-and-twenty, - of a clear transparent brown,
simply set off without rouge or powder; - it was not critically
handsome, but there was that in it, which, in the frame of mind I
was in, attached me much more to it, - it was interesting: I
fancied it wore the characters of a widow'd look, and in that state
of its declension, which had passed the two first paroxysms of
sorrow, and was quietly beginning to reconcile itself to its loss;
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