| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: mixture of ancient and modern fashions, as most suited to set of
her charms. She wore the ornaments of pure yellow gold, which her
great-great-grandmother had brought over from Saar dam; the
tempting stomacher of the olden time, and withal a provokingly
short petticoat, to display the prettiest foot and ankle in the
country round.
Ichahod Crane had a soft and foolish heart towards the sex;
and it is not to be wondered at, that so tempting a morsel soon
found favor in his eyes, more especially after he had visited her
in her paternal mansion. Old Baltus Van Tassel was a perfect
picture of a thriving, contented, liberal-hearted farmer. He
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: whom he feels an adoration like that of Louis IX. for the saint whose
name he bore.
"At nine years of age the child began to pray; prayer is her life. You
saw her in the church at Christmas, the only day on which she comes
there; she is separated from the other worshippers by a visible space.
If that space does not exist between herself and men she suffers. That
is why she passes nearly all her time alone in the chateau. The events
of her life are unknown; she is seldom seen; her days are spent in the
state of mystical contemplation which was, so Catholic writers tell
us, habitual with the early Christian solitaries, in whom the oral
tradition of Christ's own words still remained. Her mind, her soul,
Seraphita |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: unlimited, and whose treasures surmount all real and imaginary
wants, is compelled to solace, by the erection of a pyramid, the
satiety of dominion and tastelessness of pleasures, and to amuse
the tediousness of declining life by seeing thousands labouring
without end, and one stone, for no purpose, laid upon another.
Whoever thou art that, not content with a moderate condition,
imaginest happiness in royal magnificence, and dreamest that
command or riches can feed the appetite of novelty with perpetual
gratifications, survey the Pyramids, and confess thy folly!"
CHAPTER XXXIII - THE PRINCESS MEETS WITH AN UNEXPECTED MISFORTUNE.
THEY rose up, and returned through the cavity at which they had
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