| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: the Lord knows what counter-word; and, notice, it has been selected on
purpose between a courtyard and a garden to avoid any communication
with other houses. The porter is an old Spaniard, who never speaks a
word of French, but peers at people as Vidocq might, to see if they
are not thieves. If a lover, a thief, or you--I make no comparisons--
could get the better of this first wicket, well, in the first hall,
which is shut by a glazed door, you would run across a butler
surrounded by lackeys, an old joker more savage and surly even than
the porter. If any one gets past the porter's lodge, my butler comes
out, waits for you at the entrance, and puts you through a cross-
examination like a criminal. That has happened to me, a mere postman.
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling: They were nothing very heart-breaking or above the average. He
might be crippled for life financially, and want a little nursing.
Still the memory of his performances would wither away in one hot
weather, and the shroff would help him to tide over the money
troubles. But he must have taken another view altogether and have
believed himself ruined beyond redemption. His Colonel talked to
him severely when the cold weather ended. That made him more
wretched than ever; and it was only an ordinary "Colonel's
wigging!"
What follows is a curious instance of the fashion in which we are
all linked together and made responsible for one another. THE
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: occupants."
"We shall escape at all events," said Mr. Smooth-it-away, "for
Apollyon is putting on the steam again."
The road now plunged into a gorge of the Delectable Mountains,
and traversed the field where in former ages the blind men
wandered and stumbled among the tombs. One of these ancient
tombstones had been thrust across the track by some malicious
person, and gave the train of cars a terrible jolt. Far up the
rugged side of a mountain I perceived a rusty iron door, half
overgrown with bushes and creeping plants, but with smoke issuing
from its crevices.
Mosses From An Old Manse |
