| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: you, I shall find the cruel courage to tell you so. Can I command my
heart? Can I wipe out in an instant the traces of fifteen years of
suffering?--I have ceased to love.--These words contain a mystery as
deep as lies the words /I love/. Esteem, respect, friendship may be
won, lost, regained; but as to love--I might school myself for a
thousand years, and it would not blossom again, especially for a woman
too old to respond to it."
"I hope, Monsieur le Comte, I sincerely hope, that such words may not
be spoken to you some day by the woman you love, and in such a tone
and accent--"
"Will you put on a dress /a la Grecque/ this evening, and come to the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy: of the last few days, her escape from Paris with her two children, all
three of them hidden beneath the hood of a rickety cart, and lying
amidst a heap of turnips and cabbages, not daring to breathe, whilst
the mob howled, "A la lanterne les aristos!" at the awful West
Barricade.
It had all occurred in such a miraculous way; she and her
husband had understood that they had been placed on the list of
"suspected persons," which meant that their trial and death were but a
matter of days--of hours, perhaps.
Then came the hope of salvation; the mysterious epistle,
signed with the enigmatical scarlet device; the clear, peremptory
The Scarlet Pimpernel |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Frances Waldeaux by Rebecca Davis: am like one of those plants that have lost their own sap
and color, and suck in their life from another. It
scares me sometimes."
Miss Vance smiled with polite contempt. No doubt Frances
had a shrewd business faculty, but in other matters she
was not ten years old.
"And George will marry some time," she said curtly.
"Oh, I hope so! And soon. Then I shall have a daughter.
I know just the kind of a wife George will choose,"
she chattered on eagerly. "I understand him so
thoroughly that I can understand her. But where could he
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