| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: Just then, in spite of the distance between Octave's garret and the
street, the young man heard the sound of a carriage.
"There she is!" he cried; "I know her horses by the way they are
pulled up."
A few moments more, and Madame Firmiani entered the room.
"Ah!" she exclaimed, with a gesture of annoyance at seeing Monsieur de
Bourbonne. "But our uncle is not in the way," she added quickly,
smiling; "I came to humbly entreat my husband to accept my fortune.
The Austrian Embassy has just sent me a document which proves the
death of Monsieur Firmiani, also the will, which his valet was keeping
safely to put into my own hands. Octave, you can accept it all; you
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: is worth 2 pounds, 10s. So we've 12 pounds, 10s. already.
Don't read Marryat's' PIRATE anyhow; it is written in sand with a
salt-spoon: arid, feeble, vain, tottering production. But then
we're not always all there. He was all somewhere else that trip.
It's DAMNABLE, Henley. I don't go much on the 'Sea Cook'; but,
Lord, it's a little fruitier than the PIRATE by Cap'n. Marryat.
Since this was written 'The Cook' is in his nineteenth chapter.
Yo-heave ho!
R. L. S.
Letter: TO THOMAS STEVENSON
[CHALET AM STEIN, DAVOS, AUTUMN 1881.]
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lesser Hippias by Plato: Sisyphus, Eryxias, which on grounds, both of internal and external
evidence, we are able with equal certainty to reject. But there still
remains a small portion of which we are unable to affirm either that they
are genuine or spurious. They may have been written in youth, or possibly
like the works of some painters, may be partly or wholly the compositions
of pupils; or they may have been the writings of some contemporary
transferred by accident to the more celebrated name of Plato, or of some
Platonist in the next generation who aspired to imitate his master. Not
that on grounds either of language or philosophy we should lightly reject
them. Some difference of style, or inferiority of execution, or
inconsistency of thought, can hardly be considered decisive of their
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