| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: catch their own glitter amid the glittering crowd. What a pity
that one of the stately mirrors has not preserved a picture of
the scene, which, by the very traits that were so transitory,
might have taught us much that would be worth knowing and
remembering!
Would, at least, that either painter or mirror could convey to us
some faint idea of a garment, already noticed in this
legend,--the Lady Eleanore's embroidered mantle,--which the
gossips whispered was invested with magic properties, so as to
lend a new and untried grace to her figure each time that she put
it on! Idle fancy as it is, this mysterious mantle has thrown an
Twice Told Tales |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Enoch Arden, &c. by Alfred Tennyson: Things in an Aylmer deem'd impossible,
Far as we track ourselves--I say that this,--
Else I withdraw favor and countenance
From you and yours for ever--shall you do.
Sir, when you see her--but you shall not see her--
No, you shall write, and not to her, but me:
And you shall say that having spoken with me,
And after look'd into yourself, you find
That you meant nothing--as indeed you know
That you meant nothing. Such as match as this!
Impossible, prodigious!' These were words,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Purse by Honore de Balzac: painter, saying that he did not know piquet, and needed a
partner.
All through the game Madame de Rouville and her daughter
exchanged looks of intelligence, which alarmed Hippolyte all the
more because he was winning; but at last a final hand left the
lovers in the old lady's debt.
To feel for some money in his pocket the painter took his hands
off the table, and he then saw before him a purse which Adelaide
had slipped in front of him without his noticing it; the poor
child had the old one in her hand, and, to keep her countenance,
was looking into it for the money to pay her mother. The blood
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