| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac: all very well.--He is going to remove you from hence, and place you in
a little palace.--On my honor, you are not so badly off. In your
place, as you have got on the right side of this man, as soon as
Carlos is satisfied, I should make him give me a house and a settled
income. You are certainly the handsomest woman I ever saw, madame, and
the most attractive, but we so soon grow ugly! I was fresh and good-
looking, and look at me! I am twenty-three, about the same age as
madame, and I look ten years older. An illness is enough.--Well, but
when you have a house in Paris and investments, you need never be
afraid of ending in the streets."
Esther had ceased to listen to Europe-Eugenie-Prudence Servien. The
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: he escaped being sent back to slavery and torture. He told me that New York
was then full of Southerners returning from the Northern watering-places;
that the colored people of New York were not to be trusted; that there were
hired men of my own color who would betray me for a few dollars;
that there were hired men ever on the lookout for fugitives;
that I must trust no man with my secret; that I must not think
of going either upon the wharves or into any colored boarding-house,
for all such places were closely watched; that he was himself unable
to help me; and, in fact, he seemed while speaking to me to fear lest
I myself might be a spy and a betrayer. Under this apprehension,
as I suppose, he showed signs of wishing to be rid of me,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Pierre Grassou by Honore de Balzac: advanced on turnips, improperly called legs. A true painter would have
turned the little bottle-vendor off at once, assuring him that he
didn't paint vegetables. This painter looked at his client without a
smile, for Monsieur Vervelle wore a three-thousand-franc diamond in
the bosom of his shirt.
Fougeres glanced at Magus and said: "There's fat in it!" using a slang
term then much in vogue in the studios.
Hearing those words Monsieur Vervelle frowned. The worthy bourgeois
drew after him another complication of vegetables in the persons of
his wife and daughter. The wife had a fine veneer of mahogany on her
face, and in figure she resembled a cocoa-nut, surmounted by a head
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