| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: along a crop of human beings, who are, more often than not, reaped by
death, only to be born again as pinched as ever, men whose twisted and
contorted faces give out at every pore the instinct, the desire, the
poisons with which their brains are pregnant; not faces so much as
masks; masks of weakness, masks of strength, masks of misery, masks of
joy, masks of hypocrisy; all alike worn and stamped with the indelible
signs of a panting cupidity? What is it they want? Gold or pleasure? A
few observations upon the soul of Paris may explain the causes of its
cadaverous physiognomy, which has but two ages--youth and decay:
youth, wan and colorless; decay, painted to seem young. In looking at
this excavated people, foreigners, who are not prone to reflection,
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg by Mark Twain: a surprising sort. They seemed to indicate that Richards had been a
claimant for the sack himself, and that Burgess had concealed that
fact and then maliciously betrayed it.
Burgess was taxed with this and stoutly denied it. And he said it
was not fair to attach weight to the chatter of a sick old man who
was out of his mind. Still, suspicion was in the air, and there was
much talk.
After a day or two it was reported that Mrs. Richards's delirious
deliveries were getting to be duplicates of her husband's.
Suspicion flamed up into conviction, now, and the town's pride in
the purity of its one undiscredited important citizen began to dim
The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: recovered from a heavier stroke. I knew one who was then dwelling
in the isle. He told me that he and two ship captains walked to
the sea beach. There for a while they viewed the on-coming
breakers, till one of the captains clapped suddenly his hand before
his eyes and cried aloud that he could endure no longer to behold
them. This was in the afternoon; in the dark hours of the night
the sea burst upon the island like a flood; the settlement was
razed all but the church and presbytery; and, when day returned,
the survivors saw themselves clinging in an abattis of uprooted
coco-palms and ruined houses.
Danger is but a small consideration. But men are more nicely
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