| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: palpitating account of the circumstances.[121] The predisposing
conditions appear to have been slight. He had an elder brother
who had been converted and was a Catholic priest. He was himself
irreligious, and nourished an antipathy to the apostate brother
and generally to his "cloth." Finding himself at Rome in his
twenty-ninth year, he fell in with a French gentleman who tried
to make a proselyte of him, but who succeeded no farther after
two or three conversations than to get him to hang (half
jocosely) a religious medal round his neck, and to accept and
read a copy of a short prayer to the Virgin. M. Ratisbonne
represents his own part in the conversations as having been of a
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: the latest make. What I want is of a ruddier pattern than this--not
exactly a bottle-tinted pattern, but something approaching bilberry."
"I understand, sir. Of course you require only the very newest thing.
A cloth of that kind I DO possess, sir, and though excessive in
price, it is of a quality to match."
Carrying the roll of stuff to the light--even stepping into the street
for the purpose--the shopman unfolded his prize with the words, "A
truly beautiful shade! A cloth of smoked grey, shot with flame colour!"
The material met with the customer's approval, a price was agreed
upon, and with incredible celerity the vendor made up the purchase
into a brown-paper parcel, and stowed it away in Chichikov's koliaska.
Dead Souls |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Ten Years Later by Alexandre Dumas: they stole away gaping, or drew back their heads into the
interior of their dwellings, to escape the soporific
influence of that long pale face, of those watery eyes, and
that languid address; so that the worthy prince was almost
certain to find the streets deserted whenever he chanced to
pass through them.
Now, on the part of the citizens of Blois this was a
culpable piece of disrespect, for Monsieur was, after the
king -- nay, even, perhaps before the king -- the greatest
noble of the kingdom. In fact, God, who had granted to Louis
XIV., then reigning, the honor of being son of Louis XIII.,
Ten Years Later |
