| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Adieu by Honore de Balzac: "Love," he said, kissing her hands passionately, "I am Philippe."
She looked at him with curiosity.
"Come," he said, pressing her to him, "dost thou feel my heart? It has
beaten for thee alone. I love thee ever. Philippe is not dead; he is
not dead, thou art on him, in his arms. Thou art MY Stephanie; I am
thy Philippe."
"Adieu," she said, "adieu."
The colonel quivered, for he fancied he saw his own excitement
communicated to his mistress. His heart-rending cry, drawn from him by
despair, that last effort of an eternal love, of a delirious passion,
was successful, the mind of his darling was awaking.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Book of Remarkable Criminals by H. B. Irving: company, and his sister, Mary Ann, at that time Mrs. Neil. On
October 20, 1854, Peace was sentenced at Doncaster Sessions to
four years' penal servitude, and the ladies who had been found in
possession of the stolen property to six months apiece. Mrs.
Neil did not long survive her misfortune. She would seem to have
been married to a brutal and drunken husband, whom Peace thrashed
on more than one occasion for ill-treating his sister. After one
of these punishments Neil set a bull-dog on to Peace; but Peace
caught the dog by the lower jaw and punched it into a state of
coma. The death in 1859 of the unhappy Mrs. Neil was lamented in
appropriate verse, probably the work of her brother:
A Book of Remarkable Criminals |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: hension of the living. I wonder whether the mem-
ory of her compassion prevented him from cutting
his throat. But there! I suppose I am an old sen-
timentalist, and forget the instinctive love of life
which it takes all the strength of an uncommon de-
spair to overcome.
"He did the work which was given him with an
intelligence which surprised old Swaffer. By-and-
by it was discovered that he could help at the
ploughing, could milk the cows, feed the bullocks
in the cattle-yard, and was of some use with the
Amy Foster |
