| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: placed him so high that now she despaired of ever reaching him.
"Will you permit me to sometimes enter your domain?" asked the duke,
lowing his eyes.
Seeing Etienne so timid, so humble,--for he, on his part, had
magnified Beauvouloir's daughter,--Gabrielle was embarrassed with the
sceptre he placed in her hands; and yet she was profoundly touched and
flattered by such submission. Women alone know what seduction the
respect of their master and lover has for them. Nevertheless, she
feared to deceive herself, and, curious like the first woman, she
wanted to know all.
"I thought you promised yesterday to teach me music," she answered,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: important to ask whether the Senatus or the body of alumni
could do nothing towards the growth of better feeling and
wider sentiments. Perhaps in another paper we may say
something upon this head.
One other word, however, before we have done. What shall we
be when we grow really old? Of yore, a man was thought to
lay on restrictions and acquire new deadweight of mournful
experience with every year, till he looked back on his youth
as the very summer of impulse and freedom. We please
ourselves with thinking that it cannot be so with us. We
would fain hope that, as we have begun in one way, we may end
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: Increase of knowledge only discovered to me more clearly what a wretched
outcast I was. I cherished hope, it is true, but it vanished when
I beheld my person reflected in water or my shadow in the moonshine,
even as that frail image and that inconstant shade.
"I endeavoured to crush these fears and to fortify myself for the
trial which in a few months I resolved to undergo; and sometimes I
allowed my thoughts, unchecked by reason, to ramble in the fields
of Paradise, and dared to fancy amiable and lovely creatures
sympathizing with my feelings and cheering my gloom; their angelic
countenances breathed smiles of consolation. But it was all a dream;
no Eve soothed my sorrows nor shared my thoughts; I was alone.
Frankenstein |
