| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: were as far apart as if one had been in China and the other in
Greenland.
Does not the breath of vanity wither everything? Mademoiselle de
Fontaine, a prey to the most violent struggle that can torture the
heart of a young girl, reaped the richest harvest of anguish that
prejudice and narrow-mindedness ever sowed in a human soul. Her face,
but just now fresh and velvety, was streaked with yellow lines and red
patches; the paleness of her cheeks seemed every now and then to turn
green. Hoping to hide her despair from her sisters, she would laugh as
she pointed out some ridiculous dress or passer-by; but her laughter
was spasmodic. She was more deeply hurt by their unspoken compassion
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain: She had a number of rich and noble lovers and one poor
and obscure one, Sir Wendel Lobenfeld. With the native
chuckleheadedness of the heroine of romance, she preferred
the poor and obscure lover. With the native sound judgment
of the father of a heroine of romance, the von Berlichingen
of that day shut his daughter up in his donjon keep,
or his oubliette, or his culverin, or some such place,
and resolved that she should stay there until she selected
a husband from among her rich and noble lovers. The latter
visited her and persecuted her with their supplications,
but without effect, for her heart was true to her poor
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Heritage of the Desert by Zane Grey: thoughtless of time. Nor did he talk to Mescal, for the work was hard,
and he needed his breath. Splashing the water, hammering the stones,
Silvermane ever kept his nose at Hare's elbow. They climbed little
ridges, making short cuts from point to point, they threaded miles of
narrow winding creek floor, and passed under ferny cliffs and over grassy
banks and through thickets of yellow willow. As they wound along the
course of the creek, always up and up, the great walls imperceptibly
lowered their rims. The warm sun soared to the zenith. Jumble of
bowlders, stretches of white gravel ridges of sage, blocks of granite,
thickets of manzanita long yellow slopes, crumbling crags, clumps of
cedar and lines of pinon--all were passed in the persistent plodding
The Heritage of the Desert |
