| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Ruling Passion by Henry van Dyke: apparent.
It was a dim, oblong, white blot in the middle distance; a nebulous
blur in the painting, as if there had been some chemical impurity in
the pigment causing it to fade, or rather as if a long drop of some
acid, or perhaps a splash of salt water, had fallen upon the canvas
while it was wet, and bleached it. I knew little of the possible
causes of such a blot, but enough to see that it could not be erased
without painting over it, perhaps not even then. And yet it seemed
rather to enhance than to weaken the attraction which the picture
had for me.
"Your candour does you credit, Mr. Morgenstern," said I, "but you
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from McTeague by Frank Norris: McTeague's brutality as they were, she had nevertheless gone
on about her work on the Noah's ark animals, constantly in
contact with the "non-poisonous" paint. She told as much to
the doctor in answer to his questions. He shook his head
with an exclamation.
"Why, this is blood-poisoning, you know," he told her; "the
worst kind. You'll have to have those fingers amputated,
beyond a doubt, or lose the entire hand--or even worse."
"And my work!" exclaimed Trina.
CHAPTER 19
One can hold a scrubbing-brush with two good fingers and the
McTeague |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: decision, and a recklessness, or rather resolution in a crisis which
would shake a man's nerves. And these powers lie out of sight beneath
an appearance of the most graceful helplessness. Such women only among
womankind afford examples of a phenomenon which Buffon recognized in
men alone, to wit, the union, or rather the disunion, of two different
natures in one human being. Other women are wholly women; wholly
tender, wholly devoted, wholly mothers, completely null and completely
tiresome; nerves and brain and blood are all in harmony; but the
Duchess, and others like her, are capable of rising to the highest
heights of feelings, or of showing the most selfish insensibility. It
is one of the glories of Moliere that he has given us a wonderful
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