| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: her for the last three years. I have installed her in large
earthen pans on the window-sills of my study and I have her daily
under my eyes. Well, it is very rarely that I happen on her
outside, a few inches from her hole, back to which she bolts at the
least alarm.
We may take it, then, that, when not in captivity, the Lycosa does
not go far afield to gather the wherewithal to build her parapet
and that she makes shift with what she finds upon her threshold.
In these conditions, the building-stones are soon exhausted and the
masonry ceases for lack of materials.
The wish came over me to see what dimensions the circular edifice
The Life of the Spider |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from God The Invisible King by H. G. Wells: THE HOLY CROSS:
"I take this book, as its contents show, to be meant for the
instruction of very young children. I find, in one of the pages of
it, the statement that between the ages of six and six and a half
years would be the proper time for the inculcation of the teaching
which is to be found in the book. Now, six to six and a half is
certainly a very tender age, and to these children I find these
statements addressed in the book:
"'It is to the priest, and to the priest only, that the child must
acknowledge his sins, if he desires that God should forgive him.'
"I hope and trust the person, the three clergymen, or however many
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Purse by Honore de Balzac: Indeed, the face of a woman has this element of mystery to puzzle
the ordinary observer, that the difference between frankness and
duplicity, the genius for intrigue and the genius of the heart,
is there inscrutable. A man gifted with the penetrating eye can
read the intangible shade of difference produced by a more or
less curved line, a more or less deep dimple, a more or less
prominent feature. The appreciation of these indications lies
entirely in the domain of intuition; this alone can lead to the
discovery of what everyone is interested in concealing. The old
lady's face was like the room she inhabited; it seemed as
difficult to detect whether this squalor covered vice or the
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