| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Travels of Sir John Mandeville by Sir John Mandeville: be here, and men buy them there all quick, right great cheap. And
there is great plenty of adders of whom men make great feasts and
eat them at great solemnities; and he that maketh there a feast be
it never so costly, an he have no adders he hath no thank for his
travail.
Many good cities there be in that country and men have great plenty
and great cheap of all wines and victuals. In that country be many
churches of religious men, and of their law. And in those churches
be idols as great as giants; and to these idols they give to eat at
great festival days in this manner. They bring before them meat
all sodden, as hot as they come from the fire, and they let the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: grass-blades, that looked like a verdant and venerable beard."
The pleasantness and peace of his surroundings and of his modest
home, in Lenox, may be taken into account as harmonizing with the
mellow serenity of the romance then produced. Of the work, when
it appeared in the early spring of 1851, he wrote to Horatio Bridge
these words, now published for the first time:-
"`The House of the Seven Gables' in my opinion, is better than
`The Scarlet Letter:' but I should not wonder if I had refined
upon the principal character a little too much for popular
appreciation, nor if the romance of the book should be somewhat
at odds with the humble and familiar scenery in which I invest it.
House of Seven Gables |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: realization of their ideal, they become angelic for some one being who
adores them, and they are not playing comedy; they join their soul to
innocence, so to speak; they feel the need to brush off the mud, to
heal their sores, to bathe their wounds. At Les Aigues Emile Blondet
was without bitterness, without sarcasm, almost without wit; he made
no epigrams, he was gentle as a lamb, and platonically tender.
"He is such a good young fellow that I miss him terribly when he is
not here," said the general. "I do wish he could make a fortune and
not lead that Paris life of his."
Never did the glorious landscape and park of Les Aigues seem as
luxuriantly beautiful as it did just then. The first autumn days were
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