| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: and as she prattled swung the upper one, a duchess' attitude very well
suited to her capricious type of beauty, overflowing with a certain
attractive suppleness. She had laid aside her stage costume, and wore
a waist which outlined a slender figure, displayed to the best
advantage by a /panier/ and a satin dress embroidered with blue
flowers. Her breast, whose treasures were concealed by a coquettish
arrangement of lace, was of a gleaming white. Her hair was dressed
almost like Madame du Barry's; her face, although overshadowed by a
large cap, seemed only the daintier therefor, and the powder was very
becoming to her. She smiled graciously at the sculptor. Sarrasine,
disgusted beyond measure at finding himself unable to speak to her
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: slavishly bearing its burden day after day. Something of the
same idle notion comes to me to-day, when from the street-window
I look on the slow stream of human life creeping past, night and
morning, to the great mills. Masses of men, with dull, besotted
faces bent to the ground, sharpened here and there by pain or
cunning; skin and muscle and flesh begrimed with smoke and
ashes; stooping all night over boiling caldrons of metal, laired
by day in dens of drunkenness and infamy; breathing from infancy
to death an air saturated with fog and grease and soot, vileness
for soul and body. What do you make of a case like that,
amateur psychologist? You call it an altogether serious thing
Life in the Iron-Mills |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: Then the doomed man fell upon his knees crying for mercy, and his
wailing sounded so awful in that deep and lonely place that in my
horror I went near to letting the torch fall.
'To a foe I can give mercy--to a traitor, none,' answered Guatemoc,
and whirling the club aloft, he rushed upon the noble and killed
him with a blow. Then, seizing the body in his strong embrace, he
cast it into the chamber with the treasure, and there it lay still
and dreadful among the gems and gold, the arms, as it chanced,
being wound about two of the great jars as though the dead man
would clasp them to his heart.
Now I looked at Guatemoc who had slain him, wondering if my hour
Montezuma's Daughter |
