| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Cousin Pons by Honore de Balzac: were as fruitless as Mme. Cibot's. Naturally the ballet-girl's visit
/in extremis/ was not lost upon Fraisier; he vowed to himself that he
would turn it to good account.
"My dear Mme. Cibot," he began, "now is the critical moment for you."
"Ah, yes . . . my poor Cibot!" said she. "When I think that he will
not live to enjoy anything I may get--"
"It is a question of finding out whether M. Pons has left you anything
at all; whether your name is mentioned or left out, in fact," he
interrupted. "I represent the next-of-kin, and to them you must look
in any case. It is a holograph will, and consequently very easy to
upset.--Do you know where our man has put it?"
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Hero of Our Time by M.Y. Lermontov: off. The five lean jades dragged our wagons
with difficulty along the tortuous road up Mount
Get. We ourselves walked behind, placing stones
under the wheels whenever the horses were spent.
The road seemed to lead into the sky, for, so far
as the eye could discern, it still mounted up and
up, until finally it was lost in the cloud which,
since early evening, had been resting on the sum-
mit of Mount Get, like a kite awaiting its prey.
The snow crunched under our feet. The atmo-
sphere grew so rarefied that to breathe was pain-
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Kidnapped Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum: So the Daemon went back to the others, who awaited him in their caves,
and said:
"I have failed, for Santa Claus is not at all selfish."
The following day the Daemon of Envy visited Santa Claus. Said he:
"The toy shops are full of playthings quite as pretty as those you are
making. What a shame it is that they should interfere with your
business! They make toys by machinery much quicker than you can make
them by hand; and they sell them for money, while you get nothing at
all for your work."
But Santa Claus refused to be envious of the toy shops.
"I can supply the little ones but once a year--on Christmas Eve," he
A Kidnapped Santa Claus |
