| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy: therefore at liberty to enjoy life and be happy. With the
assistance of your children you could reach a high state of
prosperity. But now your property instead of increasing is
gradually growing less, and why? It is the result of your pride.
When it becomes necessary for you and your boys to go to the
field to work, your enemy instead summons you to appear at court
or before some kind of judicial person. If you do not plow at the
proper time and sow at the proper time mother earth will not
yield up her products, and you and your children will be left
destitute. Why did your oats fail this year? When did you sow
them? Were you not quarrelling with your neighbor instead of
The Kreutzer Sonata |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from My Aunt Margaret's Mirror by Walter Scott: arrival on the Continent; no others were received. One notice
occurred in the newspapers, in which Volunteer Sir Philip
Forester was mentioned as having been entrusted with a dangerous
reconnaissance, which he had executed with the greatest courage,
dexterity, and intelligence, and received the thanks of the
commanding officer. The sense of his having acquired distinction
brought a momentary glow into the lady's pale cheek; but it was
instantly lost in ashen whiteness at the recollection of his
danger. After this, they had no news whatever, neither from Sir
Philip, nor even from their brother Falconer. The case of Lady
Forester was not indeed different from that of hundreds in the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: tyrannous fascination which fully-developed womanhood exerts over
immature and impassioned natures; and, consequently, he was to spend
one of those stormy nights when a young man's thoughts travel from
happiness to suicide and back again--nights in which youth rushes
through a lifetime of bliss and falls asleep from sheer exhaustion.
Fateful nights are they, and the worst misfortune that can happen is
to awake a philosopher afterwards. M. de Nueil was far too deeply in
love to sleep; he rose and betook to inditing letters, but none of
them were satisfactory, and he burned them all.
The next day he went to Courcelles to make the circuit of her garden
walls, but he waited till nightfall; he was afraid that she might see
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