| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett: see their shell-heap that named the island; and I've heard myself
that 'twas one o' their cannibal places, but I never could believe
it. There never was no cannibals on the coast o' Maine. All the
Indians o' these regions are tame-looking folks."
"Sakes alive, yes!" exclaimed Mrs. Fosdick. "Ought to see
them painted savages I've seen when I was young out in the South
Sea Islands! That was the time for folks to travel, 'way back in
the old whalin' days!"
"Whalin' must have been dull for a lady, hardly ever makin' a
lively port, and not takin' in any mixed cargoes," said Mrs. Todd.
"I never desired to go a whalin' v'y'ge myself."
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: the hidden griefs of genius,--to know not only what it wanted but what
it was. At the period when this story begins, these vagaries of fancy,
these excursions of her soul into the void, these feelers put forth
into the darkness of the future, the impatience of an ungiven love to
find its goal, the nobility of all her thoughts of life, the decision
of her mind to suffer in a sphere of higher things rather than
flounder in the marshes of provincial life like her mother, the pledge
she had made to herself never to fail in conduct, but to respect her
father's hearth and bring it happiness,--all this world of feeling and
sentiment had lately come to a climax and taken shape. Modeste wished
to be the friend and companion of a poet, an artist, a man in some way
Modeste Mignon |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) by Dante Alighieri: Here is the reas'ning, that convinceth me
So feelingly, each argument beside
Seems blunt and forceless in comparison."
Then heard I: "Wherefore holdest thou that each,
The elder proposition and the new,
Which so persuade thee, are the voice of heav'n?"
"The works, that follow'd, evidence their truth; "
I answer'd: "Nature did not make for these
The iron hot, or on her anvil mould them."
"Who voucheth to thee of the works themselves,
Was the reply, "that they in very deed
The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) |
