| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: have been traced by a compass so pure was its modelling, shone forth
discreet, calm to placidity, and yet luminous with thought: when and
where could another be found so transparently clear or more
exquisitely smooth? It seemed, like a pearl, to have its orient. The
eyes, of a blue verging on gray and limpid as the eyes of a child, had
all the mischief, all the innocence of childhood, and they harmonized
well with the arch of the eyebrows, faintly indicated by lines like
those made with a brush on Chinese faces. This candor of the soul was
still further evidenced around the eyes, in their corners, and about
the temples, by pearly tints threaded with blue, the special privilege
of these delicate complexions. The face, whose oval Raphael so often
Modeste Mignon |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: to the successful rival's credit reaches the ear of the defeated,
it is held by plain men of no pretensions that his mouth is, in the
circumstance, almost necessarily closed. Your Church and Damien's
were in Hawaii upon a rivalry to do well: to help, to edify, to set
divine examples. You having (in one huge instance) failed, and
Damien succeeded, I marvel it should not have occurred to you that
you were doomed to silence; that when you had been outstripped in
that high rivalry, and sat inglorious in the midst of your well-
being, in your pleasant room - and Damien, crowned with glories and
horrors, toiled and rotted in that pigsty of his under the cliffs
of Kalawao - you, the elect who would not, were the last man on
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederic: had suddenly evaporated--and, of all men in the world,
the present incumbent of the Octavius pulpit now bore
down upon them with noisy effusiveness, and defied evasion.
"Brother Ware--we have never been interduced--but let
me clasp your hand! And--Sister Ware, I presume--
yours too!"
He was a portly man, who held his head back so that his
face seemed all jowl and mouth and sandy chin-whisker.
He smiled broadly upon them with half-closed eyes,
and shook hands again.
"I said to 'em," he went on with loud pretence of heartiness,
The Damnation of Theron Ware |
