| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: added a dreadful and ceaseless fear which made the future terrifying.
Women have presentiments whose accuracy is often marvellous. Why do
they fear so much more than they hope in matters that concern the
interests of this life? Why is their faith given only to religious
ideas of a future existence? Why do they so ably foresee the
catastrophes of fortune and the crises of fate? Perhaps the sentiment
which unites them to the men they love gives them a sense by which
they weigh force, measure faculties, understand tastes, passions,
vices, virtues. The perpetual study of these causes in the midst of
which they live gives them, no doubt, the fatal power of foreseeing
effects in all possible relations of earthly life. What they see of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ursula by Honore de Balzac: ran up to fifty thousand francs, imagining that the post master
expected to find a treasure in the walls; in fact the house was sold
with a reservation on this subject. Two weeks later Minoret disposed
of his post establishment, with all the coaches and horses, to the son
of a rich farmer, and went to live in his uncle's house, where he
spent considerable sums in repairing and refurnishing the rooms. By
making this move he thoughtlessly condemned himself to live within
sight of Ursula.
"I hope," he said to Dionis the day when Madame de Portenduere was
summoned to pay her debt, "that we shall soon be rid of those nobles;
after they are gone we'll drive out the rest."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Betty Zane by Zane Grey: trophies of the chase, Indian bows and arrows, pipes and tomahawks hung upon
them; the wide spreading antlers of a noble buck adorned the space above the
mantel piece; buffalo robes covered the couches; bearskin rugs lay scattered
about on the hardwood floor. The wall on the western side had been built over
a huge stone, into which had been cut an open fireplace.
This blackened recess, which had seen two houses burned over it, when full of
blazing logs had cheered many noted men with its warmth. Lord Dunmore, General
Clark, Simon Kenton, and Daniel Boone had sat beside that fire. There
Cornplanter, the Seneca chief, had made his famous deal with Colonel Zane,
trading the island in the river opposite the settlement for a barrel of
whiskey. Logan, the Mingo chief and friend of the whites, had smoked many
Betty Zane |
