| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: reflections, saddened by the recital of a drama which explained the
sudden presentiment which had seized us on seeing Cambremer. Each of
us had enough knowledge of life to divine all that our guide had not
told of that triple existence. The anguish of those three beings rose
up before us as if we had seen it in a drama, culminating in that of
the father expiating his crime. We dared not look at the rock where
sat the fatal man who held the whole countryside in awe. A few clouds
dimmed the skies; mists were creeping up from the horizon. We walked
through a landscape more bitterly gloomy than any our eyes had ever
rested on, a nature that seemed sickly, suffering, covered with salty
crust, the eczema, it might be called, of earth. Here, the soil was
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: "No, I am not ill, but I was discharged to-day and am out of work
now - that's almost as bad."
"Are you married?"
"No, but I have an old mother to support."
"Leave your address with the commissioner. He may be able to find
work for you; we can always use good men here. But now drink your
tea." Amster drank the glass in one gulp. "Well, now we have lost
the trail in both directions," said Muller calmly. "But we will
find it again. You can help, as you are free now anyway. If you
have the talent for that sort of thing, you may find permanent work
here."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: Phoebus (who, as I have told you, was an exquisite poet)
forthwith began to make an ode about the poor mother's grief;
and, if we were to judge of his sensibility by this beautiful
production, he must have been endowed with a very tender heart.
But when a poet gets into the habit of using his heartstrings
to make chords for his lyre, he may thrum upon them as much as
he will, without any great pain to himself. Accordingly, though
Phoebus sang a very sad song, he was as merry all the while as
were the sunbeams amid which he dwelt.
Poor Mother Ceres had now found out what had become of her
daughter, but was not a whit happier than before. Her case, on
Tanglewood Tales |
