| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Start in Life by Honore de Balzac: his mother's handiwork.
"We are brothers in socks," said Mistigris, pulling up his own
trousers sufficiently to show an effect of the same kind,--"'By the
footing, Hercules.'"
The count, who overheard this, laughed as he stood with folded arms
under the porte-cochere, a little behind the other travellers. However
nonsensical these lads might be, the grave statesman envied their very
follies; he liked their bragging and enjoyed the fun of their lively
chatter.
"Well, are you to have Les Moulineaux? for I know you went to Paris to
get the money for the purchase," said the inn-keeper to Pere Leger,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: mine together; things that happened to us in the morning of life,
in the blossom of our youth, in the good days, the dear days,
"the days when we went gipsying, a long time ago." Most of them
creditable to me, too. One child to whom I paid court when she
was five years old and I eight still lives in Hannibal, and she
visited me last summer, traversing the necessary ten or twelve
hundred miles of railroad without damage to her patience or to
her old-young vigor. Another little lassie to whom I paid
attention in Hannibal when she was nine years old and I the same,
is still alive--in London--and hale and hearty, just as I am.
And on the few surviving steamboats--those lingering ghosts and
What is Man? |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: salary to pay watchmen if it were needful to secure the absolute
fulfilment of her intentions. At the expiration of that term, if the
will of the testatrix has been duly carried out, the house is to
become the property of my heirs, for, as you know, a notary cannot
take a bequest. Otherwise la Grande Breteche reverts to the heirs-at-
law, but on condition of fulfilling certain conditions set forth in a
codicil to the will, which is not to be opened till the expiration of
the said term of fifty years. The will has not been disputed, so----'
And without finishing his sentence, the lanky notary looked at me with
an air of triumph; I made him quite happy by offering him my
congratulations.
La Grande Breteche |
