| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: But heirs cannot always rid themselves of uncles as easily as they
would like to. Thanks to his obstinacy, this particular uncle refused
to believe the story, and came out victorious from the attack of
indigestion produced by his nephew's biography. Some shocks affect the
heart, others the head; but in this case the cousin's blow fell on the
digestive organs and did little harm, for the old man's stomach was
sound. Like a true disciple of Saint Thomas, Monsieur de Bourbonne
came to Paris, unknown to Octave, resolved to make full inquiries as
to his nephew's insolvency. Having many acquaintances in the faubourg
Saint-Germain, among the Listomeres, the Lenoncourts, and the
Vandenesses, he heard so much gossip, so many facts and falsities,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: the sheets of characters of my boyhood, one penny plain and
twopence coloured, I should go the length of twopence every day of
my life.
But if things had grown better to the south, it was still desolate
and inclement near at hand. A spidery cross on every hill-top
marked the neighbourhood of a religious house; and a quarter of a
mile beyond, the outlook southward opening out and growing bolder
with every step, a white statue of the Virgin at the corner of a
young plantation directed the traveller to Our Lady of the Snows.
Here, then, I struck leftward, and pursued my way, driving my
secular donkey before me, and creaking in my secular boots and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: craving little for himself -- kind, true, just and of constant,
if not warm affections? Was I not all this?"
"All this, and more," said Hester.
203 THE SCARLET LETTER
The Scarlet Letter |
