| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Beauty and The Beast by Bayard Taylor: been called suddenly from Europe by the approaching death of her
aged father. For two or three days after sailing, the thick, rainy
spring weather kept all below, except a few hardy gentlemen who
crowded together on the lee of the smoke-stack, and kept up a
stubborn cheerfulness on a very small capital of comfort. There
were few cabin-passengers on board, but the usual crowd of
emigrants in the steerage.
Mrs. Lawrie's face had grown calmer and colder during these years.
There was yet no gray in her hair, no wrinkles about her clear
eyes; each feature appeared to be the same, but the pale,
monotonous color which had replaced the warm bloom of her youth,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: "Why," said Peter, "I'm a Christian--we're all Christians."
The stranger looked into the fire; and Peter thought he would change the
subject. "It's curious how like my mother you are; I mean, your ways. She
was always saying to me, 'Don't be too anxious to make money, Peter. Too
much wealth is as bad as too much poverty.' You're very like her."
After a while Peter said, bending over a little towards the stranger, "If
you don't want to make money, what did you come to this land for? No one
comes here for anything else. Are you in with the Portuguese?"
"I am not more with one people than with another," said the stranger. "The
Frenchman is not more to me than the Englishman, the Englishman than the
Kaffir, the Kaffir than the Chinaman. I have heard," said the stranger,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: finding her husband incapable of love, denied him the power to hate.
"Do not confound hatred and vengeance," said the Abbe. "They are two
different sentiments. One is the instinct of small minds; the other is
the outcome of law which great souls obey. God is avenged, but He does
not hate. Hatred is a vice of narrow souls; they feed it with all
their meanness, and make it a pretext for sordid tyranny. So beware of
offending Monsieur de la Baudraye; he would forgive an infidelity,
because he could make capital of it, but he would be doubly implacable
if you should touch him on the spot so cruelly wounded by Monsieur
Milaud of Nevers, and would make your life unendurable."
Now, at the time when the whole countryside--Nevers and Sancerre, Le
The Muse of the Department |
