| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs: Tell me that you are mistaken, or that you are but joking."
"I am telling you the truth, my friend," I replied.
"Why should I deceive a stranger, or attempt to, in so
simple a matter as the date?"
For some time he stood in silence, with bowed head.
"Ten years!" he murmured, at last. "Ten years, and I
thought that at the most it could be scarce more than one!"
That night he told me his story--the story that I give you
here as nearly in his own words as I can recall them.
I
TOWARD THE ETERNAL FIRES
At the Earth's Core |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Purse by Honore de Balzac: her, she held out her hand, unable to speak a word, but two tears
fell from her eyes. Hippolyte took her hand and covered it with
kisses; for a minute they looked at each other in silence, both
longing to confess their love, and not daring. The painter kept
her hand in his, and the same glow, the same throb, told them
that their hearts were both beating wildly. The young girl, too
greatly agitated, gently drew away from Hippolyte, and said, with
a look of the utmost simplicity:
"You will make my mother very happy."
"What, only your mother?" he asked.
"Oh, I am too happy."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Man of Business by Honore de Balzac: furniture provided by the amorous Denisart as a setting for his fair
one, describing it all in detail with diabolical complacency for
Antonia's benefit," continued Desroches. "The ebony chests inlaid with
mother-of-pearl and gold wire, the Brussels carpets, a mediaeval
bedstead worth three thousand francs, a Boule clock, candelabra in the
four corners of the dining-room, silk curtains, on which Chinese
patience had wrought pictures of birds, and hangings over the doors,
worth more than the portress that opened them.
" 'And that is what /you/ ought to have, my pretty lady.--And that is
what I should like to offer you,' he would conclude. 'I am quite aware
that you scarcely care a bit about me; but, at my age, we cannot
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