| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Old Indian Legends by Zitkala-Sa: blanket, with white border!"
Not knowing that the syllables of a Dakota's cry are the names
of loved ones gone, the ugly toad mother sought to please the boy's
ear with the names of valuable articles. Having shrieked in a
torturing voice and mouthed extravagant names, the old toad rolled
her tearless eyes with great satisfaction. Hopping back into her
dwelling, she asked:
"My son, did my voice bring tears to your eyes? Did my words
bring gladness to your ears? Do you not like my wailing better?"
"No, no!" pouted the boy with some impatience. "I want to
hear the woman's voice! Tell me, mother, why the human voice stirs
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: fascinating of those light-of-loves of whom a fantastic modern wit
declared that "he liked them better in satin slippers than in boots."
The third in the party, Couture by name, lived by speculation,
grafting one affair upon another to make the gains pay for the losses.
He was always between wind and water, keeping himself afloat by his
bold, sudden strokes and the nervous energy of his play. Hither and
thither he would swim over the vast sea of interests in Paris, in
quest of some little isle that should be so far a debatable land that
he might abide upon it. Clearly Couture was not in his proper place.
As for the fourth and most malicious personage, his name will be
enough--it was Bixiou! Not (alas!) the Bixiou of 1825, but the Bixiou
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: rugged rocks. The eye can readily mark the line where the soil, warmed
by the rays of the sun, bears cultivation and shows the native growth
of the Norwegian flora. Here the expanse of the fiord is broad enough
to allow the sea, dashed back by the Falberg, to spend its expiring
force in gentle murmurs upon the lower slope of these hills,--a shore
bordered with finest sand, strewn with mica and sparkling pebbles,
porphyry, and marbles of a thousand tints, brought from Sweden by the
river floods, together with ocean waifs, shells, and flowers of the
sea driven in by tempests, whether of the Pole or Tropics.
At the foot of the hills of Jarvis lies a village of some two hundred
wooden houses, where an isolated population lives like a swarm of bees
Seraphita |
