| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: bonds are forged. The very morrow of your marriage the graceful
structure raised by your subtle strategy may fall before that terrible
reality which makes of a girl a woman, of a gallant a husband.
Remember that there is not exemption for lovers. For them, as for
ordinary folk like Louis and me, there lurks beneath the wedding
rejoicings the great "Perhaps" of Rabelais.
I do not blame you, though, of course, it was rash, for talking with
Felipe in the garden, or for spending a night with him, you on your
balcony, he on his wall; but you make a plaything of life, and I am
afraid that life may some day turn the tables. I dare not give you the
counsel which my own experience would suggest; but let me repeat once
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: me. For I do not imagine that I have any rhetorical art of my own.
PHAEDRUS: Granted; if you will only please to get on.
SOCRATES: Suppose that you read me the first words of Lysias' speech.
PHAEDRUS: 'You know how matters stand with me, and how, as I conceive,
they might be arranged for our common interest; and I maintain that I ought
not to fail in my suit, because I am not your lover. For lovers repent--'
SOCRATES: Enough:--Now, shall I point out the rhetorical error of those
words?
PHAEDRUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Every one is aware that about some things we are agreed, whereas
about other things we differ.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: passers-by to rest themselves. At the upper end of the bank by the
house roses grew, and wall-flowers, violets, and other flowers that
cost nothing. Jessamine and honey-suckle had fastened their tendrils
on the roof, mossy already, though the building was far from old.
To the right of the house, the owner had built a stable for two cows.
In front of this erection of old boards, a sunken piece of ground
served as a yard where, in a corner, was a huge manure-heap. On the
other side of the house and the arbor stood a thatched shed, supported
on trunks of trees, under which the various outdoor properties of the
peasantry were put away,--the utensils of the vine-dressers, their
empty casks, logs of wood piled about a mound which contained the
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