| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: Lastly, there they were, sitting on the desolate shore of this
very island, hungry and downcast, and looking ruefully at the
bare bones of the stag which they devoured yesterday. This was
as far as the work had yet proceeded; but when the beautiful
woman should again sit down at her loom, she would probably
make a picture of what had since happened to the strangers, and
of what was now going to happen.
"You see," she said, "that I know all about your troubles; and
you cannot doubt that I desire to make you happy for as long a
time as you may remain with me. For this purpose, my honored
guests, I have ordered a banquet to be prepared. Fish, fowl,
Tanglewood Tales |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: ought to return thanks for her death. The bishop had emancipated his
pupil in 1811. Then, when the mother of M. de Marsay remarried, the
priest chose, in a family council, one of those honest dullards,
picked out by him through the windows of his confessional, and charged
him with the administration of the fortune, the revenues of which he
was willing to apply to the needs of the community, but of which he
wished to preserve the capital.
Towards the end of 1814, then, Henri de Marsay had no sentiment of
obligation in the world, and was as free as an unmated bird. Although
he had lived twenty-two years he appeared to be barely seventeen. As a
rule the most fastidious of his rivals considered him to be the
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: Germans, having all to gain in the seizure of the town and firm,
and, like an army in a fairy tale, restrained by the air-drawn
boundary of the neutral ground.
I have had occasion to refer to the strange appearance in these
islands of an American adventurer with a battery of cannon. The
adventurer was long since gone, but his guns remained, and one of
them was now to make fresh history. It had been cast overboard by
Brandeis on the outer reef in the course of this retreat; and word
of it coming to the ears of the Mataafas, they thought it natural
that they should serve themselves the heirs of Tamasese. On the
23rd a Manono boat of the kind called TAUMUALUA dropped down the
|
