| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Complete Angler by Izaak Walton: notice of land, when to him all appeared to be sea; and the Dove proved
a faithful and comfortable messenger. And for the sacrifices of the law,
a pair of Turtle-doves, or young Pigeons, were as well accepted as
costly Bulls and Rams; and when God would feed the Prophet Elijah,
after a kind of miraculous manner, he did it by Ravens, who brought
him meat morning and evening. Lastly, the Holy Ghost, when he
descended visibly upon our Saviour, did it by assuming the shape of a
Dove. And, to conclude this part of my discourse, pray remember these
wonders were done by birds of air, the element in which they, and I,
take so much pleasure.
There is also a little contemptible winged creature, an inhabitant of my
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Prince of Bohemia by Honore de Balzac: the operation succeeded perfectly. There are stirrings of the inner
life which throw all the calculations of surgery into disorder and
baffle the laws of medical science.
"Claudine wrote a delicious letter to La Palferine, a letter in which
the orthography was doubtful and the punctuation all to seek, to tell
him of the happy result of the operation, and to add that Love was
wiser than all the sciences.
" 'Now,' said La Palferine one day, 'what am I to do to get rid of
Claudine?'
" 'Why, she is not at all troublesome; she leaves you master of your
actions,' objected we.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: oranges for me--she that had never a sixpence to put by! Want had
drawn us together. I never could give her more than a ten-franc piece,
and often I had to borrow the money for the occasion. This will
perhaps explain my promise to go to the wedding; I hoped to efface
myself in these poor people's merry-making.
The banquet and the ball were given on a first floor above a wineshop
in the Rue de Charenton. It was a large room, lighted by oil lamps
with tin reflectors. A row of wooden benches ran round the walls,
which were black with grime to the height of the tables. Here some
eighty persons, all in their Sunday best, tricked out with ribbons and
bunches of flowers, all of them on pleasure bent, were dancing away
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