| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: live once, or do we live always? If we live once, hurried onward by
the march of the Great-Whole, a knowledge of which has not been given
to us, let us act as we please. If we are eternal, let things take
their course. Is the created being guilty if he exists at the instant
of the transitions? If he sins at the moment of a great transformation
will he be punished for it after being its victim? What becomes of the
Divine goodness if we are not transferred to the regions of the blest
--should any such exist? What becomes of God's prescience if He is
ignorant of the results of the trials to which He subjects us? What is
this alternative offered to man by all religions,--either to boil in
some eternal cauldron or to walk in white robes, a palm in his hand
Seraphita |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: thread, as I call it, is a row of coloured beads on a string. None
of the beads are missing--at least I think they're not: that's
exactly what I shall amuse myself with finding out.
I had been all summer working hard in town and then had gone down
to Folkestone for a blow. Art was long, I felt, and my holiday
short; my mother was settled at Folkestone, and I paid her a visit
when I could. I remember how on this occasion, after weeks in my
stuffy studio with my nose on my palette, I sniffed up the clean
salt air and cooled my eyes with the purple sea. The place was
full of lodgings, and the lodgings were at that season full of
people, people who had nothing to do but to stare at one another on
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: head rest there. Again the smarting lump in her throat, the stupid tears
that fell and kept on falling as she dressed the baby and dragged the
little wagon up and down the road.
A man passed, driving a bullock wagon. He wore a long, queer feather in
his hat, and whistled as he passed. Two girls with bundles on their
shoulders came walking out of the village--one wore a red handkerchief
about her head and one a blue. They were laughing and holding each other
by the hand. Then the sun pushed by a heavy fold of grey cloud and spread
a warm yellow light over everything.
"Perhaps," thought the Child-Who-Was-Tired, "if I walked far enough up this
road I might come to a little white one, with tall black trees on either
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