| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: attacked. His individuality is intensified. He becomes more
completely himself. Of course, the attacks are very gross, very
impertinent, and very contemptible. But then no artist expects
grace from the vulgar mind, or style from the suburban intellect.
Vulgarity and stupidity are two very vivid facts in modern life.
One regrets them, naturally. But there they are. They are
subjects for study, like everything else. And it is only fair to
state, with regard to modern journalists, that they always
apologise to one in private for what they have written against one
in public.
Within the last few years two other adjectives, it may be
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: That was my life; and you have not yet broken
Your way out of my house, out of my sight, --
Into the street. You are a strange young man.
I know as much as that of you, for certain;
And I'm already praying, for your sake,
That you be not too strange. Too much of that
May lead you bye and bye through gloomy lanes
To a sad wilderness, where one may grope
Alone, and always, or until he feels
Ferocious and invisible animals
That wait for men and eat them in the dark.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: some charitable soul. Some widower or Adonis of forty, brought so
often into the secrets of these sad lives, may perhaps have reckoned
on the poverty of this mother and daughter, and have hoped to become
the master at no great cost of the innocent work-woman, whose nimble
and dimpled fingers, youthful figure, and white skin--a charm due, no
doubt, to living in this sunless street--had excited his admiration.
Perhaps, again, some honest clerk, with twelve hundred francs a year,
seeing every day the diligence the girl gave to her needle, and
appreciating the purity of her life, was only waiting for improved
prospects to unite one humble life with another, one form of toil to
another, and to bring at any rate a man's arm and a calm affection,
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