| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: her knees in the ardor of his love; he listened to the story of her
persecutions and the details of the count's tyranny; he grew pitiful
over the poor lady, who was, in truth, the best-loved natural daughter
of Louis XI. He promised her to go on the morrow and reveal her wrongs
to that terrible father; everything, he assured her, should be settled
as they wished, the marriage broken off, the husband banished,--and
all this within reach of that husband's sword, of which they might
both be the victims if the slightest noise awakened him. But in the
young man's dream the gleam of the lamp, the flame of their eyes, the
colors of the stuffs and the tapestries were more vivid, more of love
was in the air, more fire about them, than there had been in the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: wondering if some day she would accept me; but this was not what I
brought out. I said as I smoothed down my hat: "I know what to
think then. It's nothing!"
A remote disdainful pity for me gathered in her dim smile; then she
spoke in a voice that I hear at this hour: "It's my LIFE!" As I
stood at the door she added: "You've insulted him!"
"Do you mean Vereker?"
"I mean the Dead!"
I recognised when I reached the street the justice of her charge.
Yes, it was her life - I recognised that too; but her life none the
less made room with the lapse of time for another interest. A year
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: gardener's art, compared with a fine, dark green one, growing
vigorously in the open fields."
Ben Jonson exclaims,--
"How near to good is what is fair!"
So I would say,--
"How near to good is what is WILD!"
Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not
yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him. One who pressed
forward incessantly and never rested from his labors, who grew
fast and made infinite demands on life, would always find himself
in a new country or wilderness, and surrounded by the raw
Walking |
