| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy: insinuatingly, "Lady Blakeney is the pivot of social London, so I am
told. . .you see everything, you HEAR everything."
"Easy, my friend," retorted Marguerite, drawing, herself up to
her full height and looking down, with a slight thought of contempt on
the small, thin figure before her. "Easy! you seem to forget that
there are six feet of Sir Percy Blakeney, and a long line of ancestors
to stand between Lady Blakeney and such a thing as you propose."
"For the sake of France, citoyenne!" reiterated Chauvelin, earnestly.
"Tush, man, you talk nonsense anyway; for even if you did know who this
Scarlet Pimpernel is, you could do nothing to him--an Englishman!"
"I'd take my chance of that," said Chauvelin, with a dry,
 The Scarlet Pimpernel |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Oakdale Affair by Edgar Rice Burroughs: away a high flung arc swung gently from its support-
ing cables, casting a fair light upon the alley's mouth,
and just emerging from behind the nearer fence Willie
Case saw the huge bulk of a bear. Terrified, Willie
jumped behind a tree; and then, fearful lest the animal
might have caught sight or scent of him he poked his
head cautiously around the side of the bole just in
time to see the figure of a girl come out of the alley be-
hind the bear. Willie recognized her at the first glance--
she was the very girl he had seen burying the dead man
in the Squibbs woods. Instantly Willie Case was trans-
 The Oakdale Affair |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: to-day. I have been bothered with her for three whole days, and
could not manage to make her go into the house; try as I would,
it was impossible. It never would come right. But to-day I
remembered that there is a mirror in every hall, and that every
lady wears a bonnet.
"As soon as I remembered that, she went where I wanted her
to, and did everything she had to. You would think a bonnet is a
small affair, but everything depended on that bonnet."
As I recall this conversation, I feel sure that my father
was talking about that scene in "Anna Karénina" where
Anna went to see her son.
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