| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: "I suffer with you; I understand you; come with me; let us weep
together beside the brook, beneath the willows." And they follow him!
They listen to his empty and sonorous poetry like infants to a nurse's
lullaby. Canalis, like Nodier, enchants the reader by an artlessness
which is genuine in the prose writer and artificial in the poet, by
his tact, his smile, the shedding of his rose-leaves, in short by his
infantile philosophy. He imitates so well the language of our early
youth that he leads us back to the prairie-land of our illusions. We
can be pitiless to the eagles, requiring from them the quality of the
diamond, incorruptible perfection; but as for Canalis, we take him for
what he is and let the rest go. He seems a good fellow; the
Modeste Mignon |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells: dawning--the stream of flight rising swiftly to a torrent, lash-
ing in a foaming tumult round the railway stations, banked
up into a horrible struggle about the shipping in the Thames,
and hurrying by every available channel northward and east-
ward. By ten o'clock the police organisation, and by midday
even the railway organisations, were losing coherency, losing
shape and efficiency, guttering, softening, running at last in
that swift liquefaction of the social body.
All the railway lines north of the Thames and the South-
Eastern people at Cannon Street had been warned by mid-
night on Sunday, and trains were being filled. People were
War of the Worlds |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: were necessary to the happiness and tranquility of his life. The
result was that Mademoiselle Gamard frequently remarked to her friends
and acquaintances that the Abbe Chapeloud was a very amiable man,
extremely easy to live with, and a fine mind.
As to her other lodger, the Abbe Troubert, she said absolutely nothing
about him. Completely involved in the round of her life, like a
satellite in the orbit of a planet, Troubert was to her a sort of
intermediary creature between the individuals of the human species and
those of the canine species; he was classed in her heart next, but
directly before, the place intended for friends but now occupied by a
fat and wheezy pug which she tenderly loved. She ruled Troubert
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