| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: that I encountered on the way contributed, I know not how, to
heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken.
While the objects around me--while the carvings of the ceilings,
the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the
floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as
I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had
been accustomed from my infancy--while I hesitated not to
acknowledge how familiar was all this--I still wondered to find
how unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were
stirring up. On one of the staircases, I met the physician of
the family. His countenance, I thought, wore a mingled
The Fall of the House of Usher |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Deputy of Arcis by Honore de Balzac: sound sleep. The malicious Achille Pigoult had urged all present to
listen religiously to the young orator, who was now floundering in his
phrases and paraphrases hopelessly at random.
V
THE PERPLEXITIES OF THE GOVERNMENT IN ARCIS
At this moment several groups of bourgeois, electors and non-electors,
were standing before the Chateau d'Arcis, the iron gates of which open
on the square near to the door of Madame Marion's house. This square
is a piece of open ground from which issue several roads and several
streets. In it is a covered market. Opposite to the chateau, on the
other side of the square, which is neither paved nor macadamized, and
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Barlaam and Ioasaph by St. John of Damascus: Christian need fear any secret surprise, but all might come
together without fear, as friends and kindred, for the honest and
unrestrained enquiry that should be held with their chief and
captain, Barlaam. In like manner also he summoned the initiate
and the temple-keepers of his idols, and wise men of the
Chaldeans and Indians that were in all his kingdom, beside
certain augurs, sorcerers and seers, that they might get the
better of the Christians.
Then were there gathered together multitudes that held his
loathly religion; but of the Christians was there found one only
that came to the help of the supposed Barlaam. His name was
|
