| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Deputy of Arcis by Honore de Balzac: "Enough, monsieur," said the sister of the steward of Cinq-Cygne.
After such a beginning, the stranger kept the mistress of the house a
whole hour and made her tell him all she knew of Arcis, of its
fortunes, its interests, and its functionaries. The next day he
disappeared on horseback, followed by his tiger, returning at
midnight.
We can now understand Mademoiselle Cecile's little joke, which Madame
Beauvisage thought to be without foundation. Beauvisage and Cecile,
surprised by the order of the day promulgated by Severine, were
enchanted. While his wife went to dress for Madame Marion's reception,
the father listened to the many conjectures it was natural a girl
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: belief that power is absorbed until the next lecture, when our
dogmatic conclusions, if we have any, must be reached. Let this
lecture still confine itself to the description of phenomena; and
as a concrete example of an extreme sort, of the way in which the
prayerful life may still be led, let me take a case with which
most of you must be acquainted, that of George Muller of Bristol,
who died in 1898. Muller's prayers were of the crassest
petitional order. Early in life he resolved on taking certain
Bible promises in literal sincerity, and on letting himself be
fed, not by his own worldly foresight, but by the Lord's hand.
He had an extraordinarily active and successful career, among the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy: "What?" said she.
"Nothing can be done, by me or any other man. It will soon be all
over. The extremities are dead already." His eyes still remained
fixed on her; the conclusion to which he had come seeming to end
his interest, professional and otherwise, in Winterborne forever.
"But it cannot be! He was well three days ago."
"Not well, I suspect. This seems like a secondary attack, which
has followed some previous illness--possibly typhoid--it may have
been months ago, or recently."
"Ah--he was not well--you are right. He was ill--he was ill when
I came."
The Woodlanders |
