| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Passion in the Desert by Honore de Balzac: imaginary music in the skies. Then solitude taught him to unroll the
treasures of dreams. He passed whole hours in remembering mere
nothings, and comparing his present life with his past.
At last he grew passionately fond of the panther; for some sort of
affection was a necessity.
Whether it was that his will powerfully projected had modified the
character of his companion, or whether, because she found abundant
food in her predatory excursions in the desert, she respected the
man's life, he began to fear for it no longer, seeing her so well
tamed.
He devoted the greater part of his time to sleep, but he was obliged
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: house which could raise, and that very justly, the envy and the
comments of the passers-by. I think (to employ a phrase of yours
which I admire) it "should be attributed" to you that you have
never visited the scene of Damien's life and death. If you had,
and had recalled it, and looked about your pleasant rooms, even
your pen perhaps would have been stayed.
Your sect (and remember, as far as any sect avows me, it is mine)
has not done ill in a worldly sense in the Hawaiian Kingdom. When
calamity befell their innocent parishioners, when leprosy descended
and took root in the Eight Islands, a QUID PRO QUO was to be looked
for. To that prosperous mission, and to you, as one of its
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: that she did not hear the slight noise of her companion's footsteps.
It is true that, to use an expression of Walter Scott, Amelie stepped
as if on eggs. She hastily withdrew outside the door and coughed.
Ginevra quivered, turned her head, saw her enemy, blushed, hastened to
alter the shade to give meaning to her position, and came down from
her perch leisurely. She soon after left the studio, bearing with her,
in her memory, the image of a man's head, as beauteous as that of the
Endymion, a masterpiece of Girodet's which she had lately copied.
"To banish so young a man! Who can he be? for he is not Marshal Ney--"
These two sentences are the simplest expression of the many ideas that
Ginevra turned over in her mind for two days. On the third day, in
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