| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson: suppose that King was a thought careless, being nearly in
desperation about his team, and, in spite of the cold morning,
breathing hot with his exertions. We came, at last, a little
before sunrise to the summit of a hill, and saw the high-road
passing at right angles through an open country of meadows and
hedgerow pollards; and not only the York mail, speeding smoothly at
the gallop of the four horses, but a post-chaise besides, with the
post-boy titupping briskly, and the traveller himself putting his
head out of the window, but whether to breathe the dawn, or the
better to observe the passage of the mail, I do not know. So that
we enjoyed for an instant a picture of free life on the road, in
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: we can render in words the emotions excited in the heart of an exile
by a song which recalls his fatherland. The contempt which the old man
affected to pour upon the noblest efforts of art, his wealth, his
manners, the respectful deference shown to him by Porbus, his work
guarded so secretly,--a work of patient toil, a work no doubt of
genius, judging by the head of the Virgin which Poussin had so naively
admired, and which, beautiful beside even the Adam of Mabuse, betrayed
the imperial touch of a great artist,--in short, everything about the
strange old man seemed beyond the limits of human nature. The rich
imagination of the youth fastened upon the one perceptible and clear
clew to the mystery of this supernatural being,--the presence of the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: partly turning back, he pointed his finger within the parlor,
and shook it slowly as though he would have summoned, not Hepzibah
alone, but the whole world, to gaze at some object inconceivably
ridiculous. This action, so ill-timed and extravagant,--accompanied,
too, with a look that showed more like joy than any other kind of
excitement,--compelled Hepzibah to dread that her stern kinsman's
ominous visit had driven her poor brother to absolute insanity.
Nor could she otherwise account for the Judge's quiescent mood
than by supposing him craftily on the watch, while Clifford
developed these symptoms of a distracted mind.
"Be quiet, Clifford!" whispered his sister, raising her hand to
House of Seven Gables |
