| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: Long after this, when Henry the Fifth,
Succeeding his father Bolingbroke, did reign,
Thy father, Earl of Cambridge, then derived
From famous Edmund Langley, Duke of York,
Marrying my sister that thy mother was,
Again in pity of my hard distress.
Levied an army, weening to redeem
And have install'd me in the diadem:
But, as the rest, so fell that noble earl
And was beheaded. Thus the Mortimers,
In whom the title rested, were suppress'd.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad: to enter for a moment Madame Leonore's cafe. But this time when I
got on the quay Dominic was nowhere to be seen. What was it?
Abandonment - discretion - or had he quarrelled with his Leonore
before leaving on the trip?
My way led me past the cafe and through the glass panes I saw that
he was already there. On the other side of the little marble table
Madame Leonore, leaning with mature grace on her elbow, was
listening to him absorbed. Then I passed on and - what would you
have! - I ended by making my way into the street of the Consuls. I
had nowhere else to go. There were my things in the apartment on
the first floor. I couldn't bear the thought of meeting anybody I
The Arrow of Gold |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac: breeches of poult-de-soie with gold buckles, a white waistcoat without
embroidery, and a tight cravat showing no shirt-collar,--a last
vestige of the old French costume which he did not renounce, perhaps,
because it enabled him to show a neck like that of the sleekest abbe.
His shoes were noticeable for their square buckles, a style of which
the present generation has no knowledge; these buckles were fastened
to a square of polished black leather. The chevalier allowed two
watch-chains to hang parallel to each other from each of his waistcoat
pockets,--another vestige of the eighteenth century, which the
Incroyables had not disdained to use under the Directory. This
transition costume, uniting as it did two centuries, was worn by the
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