| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: unscrupulously, hinder your advance to fortune, and end by
destroying your future with the best grace possible. If you
complain, the silliest of them will make you think that her glove
is more precious than fortune, and that nothing is so glorious as
to be her slave. They will all tell you that they bestow
happiness, and thus lull you to forget your nobler destiny.
Believe me, the happiness they give is transitory; your great
career will endure. You know not with what perfidious cleverness
they contrive to satisfy their caprices, nor the art with which
they will convert your passing fancy into a love which ought to be
eternal. The day when they abandon you they will tell you that the
The Lily of the Valley |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tom Sawyer Abroad by Mark Twain: "There ain't no sense in that, Tom Sawyer."
"Who said there WAS? What do you talk to me
like that for, Huck Finn? You wait till I say a thing's
got sense in it before you go to accusing me of say-
ing it."
"All right, consider me crying about it, and sorry.
Go on."
Jim says:
"Mars Tom, do dey jam dat duty onto everything
we can't raise in America, en don't make no 'stinction
'twix' anything?"
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen: locality and its inhabitants very useful. It is, perhaps,
needless to say that my friends had never heard the name of
Beaumont, and as I had never seen the lady, and was quite
unable to describe her, I had to set to work in an indirect
way. The people there know me; I have been able to do some of
them a service now and again, so they made no difficulty about
giving their information; they were aware I had no
communication direct or indirect with Scotland Yard. I had to
cast out a good many lines, though, before I got what I wanted,
and when I landed the fish I did not for a moment suppose it
was my fish. But I listened to what I was told out of a
The Great God Pan |
