| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mansion by Henry van Dyke: charm:
each one seemed to have its own personal look of loveliness;
yet all were alike in fitness to their place, in harmony with one
another,
in the addition which each made to the singular and tranquil
splendor of
the city.
As the little company came, one by one, to the mansions which
were
prepared for them, and their Guide beckoned to the happy
inhabitant
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini: about the building cathedral, upon which work had been commenced
a year ago. But he did not pause to ascertain the particular cause
of that gathering. He strode on, and thus came presently to the
handsome Italianate palace that was one of the few public edifices
hat had survived the devastating fire of sixty years ago.
He won through with difficulty to the great hall, known as the Salle
des Pas Perdus, where he was left to cool his heels for a full
half-hour after he had found an usher so condescending as to inform
the god who presided over that shrine of Justice that a lawyer from
Gavrillac humbly begged an audience on an affair of gravity.
That the god condescended to see him at all was probably due to the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: in lulling her cousin's pain with the pretty childish joys of a new-
born love. Are there no sweet similitudes between the birth of love
and the birth of life? Do we not rock the babe with gentle songs and
softest glances? Do we not tell it marvellous tales of the golden
future? Hope herself, does she not spread her radiant wings above its
head? Does it not shed, with infant fickleness, its tears of sorrow
and its tears of joy? Does it not fret for trifles, cry for the pretty
pebbles with which to build its shifting palaces, for the flowers
forgotten as soon as plucked? Is it not eager to grasp the coming
time, to spring forward into life? Love is our second transformation.
Childhood and love were one and the same thing to Eugenie and to
Eugenie Grandet |
