| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry: and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they
are wisest. They are the magi.
End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of THE GIFT OF THE MAGI.
The Gift of the Magi |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: subterfuge, admired her as Michael Angelo admired Raphael, in petto.
Victurnien loved Diane, according to one of these ladies, for the sake
of her hair--she had the most beautiful fair hair in France; another
maintained that Diane's pallor was her principal merit, for she was
not really well shaped, her dress made the most of her figure; yet
others thought that Victurnien loved her for her foot, her one good
point, for she had a flat figure. But (and this brings the present-day
manner of Paris before you in an astonishing manner) whereas all the
men said that the Duchess was subsidizing Victurnien's splendor, the
women, on the other hand, gave people to understand that it was
Victurnien who paid for the angel's wings, as Rastignac said.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: up an animated concert through the plain; from farm to
farm, dogs and crowing cocks contend together in
defiance; and yet from this Olympian station, except for
the whispering rumour of a train, the world has fallen
into a dead silence, and the business of town and country
grown voiceless in your ears. A crying hill-bird, the
bleat of a sheep, a wind singing in the dry grass, seem
not so much to interrupt, as to accompany, the stillness;
but to the spiritual ear, the whole scene makes a music
at once human and rural, and discourses pleasant
reflections on the destiny of man. The spiry habitable
|
