| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: recollected, and the only letter he preserved of all those which Louis
Lambert wrote to him at that time, perhaps because it was the last and
the longest.
To begin with the story. Louis one evening was at the Theatre-
Francais, seated on a bench in the upper gallery, near to one of the
pillars which, in those days, divided off the third row of boxes. On
rising between the acts, he saw a young woman who had just come into
the box next him. The sight of this lady, who was young, pretty, well
dressed, in a low bodice no doubt, and escorted by a man for whom her
face beamed with all the charms of love, produced such a terrible
effect on Lambert's soul and senses, that he was obliged to leave the
Louis Lambert |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Chinese Boy and Girl by Isaac Taylor Headland: as if starting the boat, and then pulled as if rowing, and with
every pull of the oar, the girl ran a few steps, making it appear
that the boat shot forward. All the while the boy sang a
boat-song or a love-ditty to his sweetheart.
Again the scene changed. The head and hind parts of a papier
mache horse were fastened to the "tomboy" in such a way as to
make it appear that she was riding; a cloth was let down to hide
her feet, and they ran to and fro, one in one direction and the
other in the other, she jerking her unmanageable steed, and he
singing songs, and all to the music of the drum and the cymbals.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from When a Man Marries by Mary Roberts Rinehart: raucously. The tent gleamed, a starlit ghost of itself, and the
boxwoods bent in the breeze. I went over to the parapet and
leaned my elbows on it. I had done the same thing so often
before; I had carried all my times of stress so infallibly to
that particular place, that instinctively my feet turned there.
And there in the starlight, I went over the whole serio-comedy,
and I loathed my part in it. He had been perfectly right to be
angry with me and with all of us. And I had been a hypocrite and
a Pharisee, and had thanked God that I was not as other people,
when the fact was that I was worse than the worst. And although
it wasn't dignified to think of him going down the drain pipe,
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