| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Cousin Pons by Honore de Balzac: lest haply any fool should fall into her intellectual excavations;
and, indeed, if you fathom these abysses, you find nothing but a
German at the bottom.
Both friends were Catholics. They went to Mass and performed the
duties of religion together; and, like children, found nothing to tell
their confessors. It was their firm belief that music is to feeling
and thought as thought and feeling are to speech; and of their
converse on this system there was no end. Each made response to the
other in orgies of sound, demonstrating their convictions, each for
each, like lovers.
Schmucke was as absent-minded as Pons was wide-awake. Pons was a
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare: Till every minute pays the hour his debt.
'So, so,' quoth he, 'these lets attend the time,
Like little frosts that sometime threat the spring.
To add a more rejoicing to the prime,
And give the sneaped birds more cause to sing.
Pain pays the income of each precious thing;
Huge rocks, high winds, strong pirates, shelves and sands,
The merchant fears, ere rich at home he lands.'
Now is he come unto the chamber door,
That shuts him from the heaven of his thought,
Which with a yielding latch, and with no more,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: the Great Carbuncle. Immediately on obtaining it--for I have a
presentiment, good people that the prize is reserved to crown my
scientific reputation--I shall return to Europe, and employ my
remaining years in reducing it to its first elements. A portion
of the stone will I grind to impalpable powder; other parts shall
be dissolved in acids, or whatever solvents will act upon so
admirable a composition; and the remainder I design to melt in
the crucible, or set on fire with the blow-pipe. By these various
methods I shall gain an accurate analysis, and finally bestow the
result of my labors upon the world in a folio volume."
"Excellent!" quoth the man with the spectacles. "Nor need you
Twice Told Tales |
