| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: reconcile us all?"
"I hear in my heart what my mother is saying at this moment," she
replied, with a look which Ingres gave to his "Mother of God,"--that
virgin, already sorrowful, preparing herself to protect the world for
which her son was about to die.
"And you condemn me at the moment when your mother absolves me,--if
indeed I am guilty."
"You, YOU," she said, "always YOUR SELF!"
The tones of her voice revealed the determined hatred of a Corsican,
implacable as the judgments of those who, not having studied life,
admit of no extenuation of faults committed against the laws of the
The Lily of the Valley |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Barlaam and Ioasaph by St. John of Damascus: that delighteth to wallow in mire, the soul, that hath been
buried in evil habits, doth not even perceive the stink of her
sin, but rather delighteth and rejoiceth therein, cleaving to
wickedness as it were good. And even if at last she issue from
the mire and come to herself again, she is delivered only by much
labour and sweat from the bondage of those sins, to which she
hath by evil custom enslaved herself.
"Wherefore with all thy might remove thyself far from every evil
thought and fancy, and every sinful custom; and school thyself
the rather in virtuous deeds, and form the habit of practising
them. For if thou labour but a little therein, and have strength
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lemorne Versus Huell by Elizabeth Drew Stoddard: without it."
"The striking of the clock," I soliloquized, "proves that this
scene is not a phantasm."
"Margaret is fatigued," he said, rising. "May I come to-morrow?"
"It is my part only," replied Aunt Eliza, "to see that she is,
or is not, Cinderella."
"If you have ever thought of me, aunt, as an individual, you must
have seen that I am not averse to ashes."
He held my hand a moment, and then kissed me with a kiss of
appropriation.
"He is in love with you," she said, after he had gone. "I think
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