| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Ruling Passion by Henry van Dyke: headstrong desire to fight. Everything that Prosper did well,
seemed like a challenge; every success that he had was as hard to
bear as an insult. All the more, because Prosper seemed unconscious
of it. He refused to take offence, went about his work quietly and
cheerfully, turned off hard words with a joke, went out of his way
to show himself friendly and good-natured. In reality, of course,
he knew well enough how matters stood. But he was resolved not to
show that he knew, if he could help it; and in any event, not to be
one of the two that are needed to make a quarrel.
He felt very strangely about it. There was a presentiment in his
heart that he did not dare to shake off. It seemed as if this
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: here, at this porter's lodge, where they are administrationized. This
man has registers in which his dead are booked; they are in their
graves, and also on his records. He has under him keepers, gardeners,
grave-diggers, and their assistants. He is a personage. Mourning
hearts do not speak to him at first. He does not appear at all except
in serious cases, such as one corpse mistaken for another, a murdered
body, an exhumation, a dead man coming to life. The bust of the
reigning king is in his hall; possibly he keeps the late royal,
imperial, and quasi-royal busts in some cupboard,--a sort of little
Pere-Lachaise all ready for revolutions. In short, he is a public man,
an excellent man, good husband and good father,--epitaph apart. But so
Ferragus |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: Saint Olaf hired him to build a church. If the church were
completed within a certain specified time, the Troll was to
get possession of Saint Olaf. The saint then planned such a
stupendous edifice that he thought the giant would be forever
building it; but the work went on briskly, and at the
appointed day nothing remained but to finish the point of the
spire. In his consternation Olaf rushed about until he passed
by the Troll's den, when he heard the giantess telling her
children that their father, Wind-and-Weather, was finishing
his church, and would be home to-morrow with Saint Olaf. So
the saint ran back to the church and bawled out, "Hold on,
Myths and Myth-Makers |
