| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: bronze,--gracile as the palmettoes that sway above them....
Further seaward you may also pass a Chinese settlement: some
queer camp of wooden dwellings clustering around a vast platform
that stands above the water upon a thousand piles;--over the
miniature wharf you can scarcely fail to observe a white
sign-board painted with crimson ideographs. The great platform
is used for drying fish in the sun; and the fantastic characters
of the sign, literally translated, mean: "Heap--Shrimp--Plenty."
... And finally all the land melts down into desolations of
sea-marsh, whose stillness is seldom broken, except by the
melancholy cry of long-legged birds, and in wild seasons by that
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: I saw no inconsistency. Their talk seemed to open to one
the brilliant world in which they lived; every sentence made
one older and wiser, every pleasantry enlarged one's horizon.
One could experience excess and satiety without the inconvenience
of learning what to do with one's hands in a drawing-room!
When the characters all spoke at once and I missed some
of the phrases they flashed at each other, I was in misery.
I strained my ears and eyes to catch every exclamation.
The actress who played Marguerite was even then old-fashioned,
though historic. She had been a member of Daly's famous New
York company, and afterward a `star' under his direction.
My Antonia |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Purse by Honore de Balzac: lis less bright, the shoulder straps more hopeless and dog's
eared; his intellect seemed more feeble, his life nearer the
fatal term than in the former. In short, he realized Rivarol's
witticism on Champcenetz, "He is the moonlight of me." He was
simply his double, a paler and poorer double, for there was
between them all the difference that lies between the first and
last impressions of a lithograph.
This speechless old man was a mystery to the painter, and always
remained a mystery. The Chevalier, for he was a Chevalier, did
not speak, nobody spoke to him. Was he a friend, a poor relation,
a man who followed at the old gallant's heels as a lady companion
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