| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: chests of tea, bags of coffee, and packing-cases of every shape. A
silver soup tureen on the chimney-piece was full of advices of the
arrival of goods consigned to his order at Havre, bales of cotton,
hogsheads of sugar, barrels of rum, coffees, indigo, tobaccos, a
perfect bazaar of colonial produce. The room itself was crammed with
furniture, and silver-plate, and lamps, and vases, and pictures; there
were books, and curiosities, and fine engravings lying rolled up,
unframed. Perhaps these were not all presents, and some part of this
vast quantity of stuff had been deposited with him in the shape of
pledges, and had been left on his hands in default of payment. I
noticed jewel-cases, with ciphers and armorial bearings stamped upon
Gobseck |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: moved aside to make room for the stranger. There was neither servility
nor scorn in her manner of doing this; it was a simple sign of the
goodwill by which the poor, who know by long experience the value of a
service and the warmth that fellowship brings, give expression to the
open-heartedness and the natural impulses of their souls; so artlessly
do they reveal their good qualities and their defects. The stranger
thanked her by a gesture full of gracious dignity, and took his place
between the young mother and the old soldier. Immediately behind him
sat a peasant and his son, a boy ten years of age. A beggar woman,
old, wrinkled, and clad in rags, was crouching, with her almost empty
wallet, on a great coil of rope that lay in the prow. One of the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle: had not so much as a farthing to cross their palms withal.
But after Robin left the little dell he strode along merrily, singing as
he went; and so blithe was he and such a stout beggar, and, withal, so fresh
and clean, that every merry lass he met had a sweet word for him and felt
no fear, while the very dogs, that most times hate the sight of a beggar,
snuffed at his legs in friendly wise and wagged their tails pleasantly;
for dogs know an honest man by his smell, and an honest man Robin was--
in his own way.
Thus he went along till at last he had come to the wayside cross
nigh Ollerton, and, being somewhat tired, he sat him down to rest
upon the grassy bank in front of it. "It groweth nigh time,"
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood |
