| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Prince of Bohemia by Honore de Balzac: retained their title, and received a couple of offices under the crown
with the government of a province.
"From the time of the Valois till the reign of Richelieu, as it may be
called, the Rusticoli played a most illustrious part; under Louis XIV.
their glory waned somewhat, under Louis XV. it went out altogether. My
friend's grandfather wasted all that was left to the once brilliant
house with Mlle. Laguerre, whom he first discovered, and brought into
fashion before Bouret's time. Charles Edward's own father was an
officer without any fortune in 1789. The Revolution came to his
assistance; he had the sense to drop his title, and became plain
Rusticoli. Among other deeds, M. Rusticoli married a wife during the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: down the sides of the pyramid, and so laboured on removing layer
upon layer of stones and of the earth beneath, till where the path
had been, was nothing but a yawning gap thirty feet or more in
width.
'Now,' I said, surveying our handiwork by the light of the rising
moon, 'that Spaniard who would win our nest must find wings to fly
with.'
'Ay, Teule,' answered one at my side, 'but say what wings shall WE
find?'
'The wings of Death,' I said grimly, and went on my upward way.
It was near midnight when I reached the temple, for the labour of
Montezuma's Daughter |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: delight, but he had hardly patience to describe it. He was a great
day-dreamer, a seer of fit and beautiful and humorous visions, but
hardly a great artist; hardly, in the manful sense, an artist at
all. He pleased himself, and so he pleases us. Of the pleasures
of his art he tasted fully; but of its toils and vigils and
distresses never man knew less. A great romantic - an idle child.
CHAPTER XVI. A HUMBLE REMONSTRANCE (11)
WE have recently (12) enjoyed a quite peculiar pleasure: hearing,
in some detail, the opinions, about the art they practise, of Mr.
Walter Besant and Mr. Henry James; two men certainly of very
different calibre: Mr. James so precise of outline, so cunning of
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