| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson: remember the beginning, it is bare courtesy to speak in sorrow. Be
just, madam: you would think me strangely uncivil to recall these
days without the decency of a regret. Be yet a little juster, and
own, if only in complaisance, that you yourself regret that past.'
'I have nothing to regret,' said the Princess. 'You surprise me. I
thought you were so happy.'
'Happy and happy, there are so many hundred ways,' said Otto. 'A
man may be happy in revolt; he may be happy in sleep; wine, change,
and travel make him happy; virtue, they say, will do the like - I
have not tried; and they say also that in old, quiet, and habitual
marriages there is yet another happiness. Happy, yes; I am happy if
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: to the encrusted gables that drape it as with some rich bejewelled
mantle falling about it in the most graceful of folds, it is the
very eastern princess of a building standing in the majesty of her
court to give you audience.
A pebbly path, a low flight of stone steps, a pause to leave your
shoes without the sill, and you tread in the twilight of reverence
upon the moss-like mats within. The richness of its outer ornament,
so impressive at first, is, you discover, but prelude to the lavish
luxury of its interior. Lacquer, bronze, pigments, deck its ceiling
and its sides in such profusion that it seems to you as if art had
expanded, in the congenial atmosphere, into a tropical luxuriance of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac: upon a woman's ever-changing fancy.
During M. de Montriveau's voyage of discovery to the sources of
the Nile, he had had an argument with one of his guides, surely
the most extraordinary debate in the annals of travel. The
district that he wished to explore could only be reached on foot
across a tract of desert. Only one of his guides knew the way;
no traveller had penetrated before into that part of the country,
where the undaunted officer hoped to find a solution of several
scientific problems. In spite of the representations made to him
by the guide and the older men of the place, he started upon the
formidable journey. Summoning up courage, already highly strung
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