| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: door of the atelier where the famous painter of Henry IV.--neglected
by Marie de Medicis for Rubens--was probably at work. The young man
felt the strong sensation which vibrates in the soul of great artists
when, in the flush of youth and of their ardor for art, they approach
a man of genius or a masterpiece. In all human sentiments there are,
as it were, primeval flowers bred of noble enthusiasms, which droop
and fade from year to year, till joy is but a memory and glory a lie.
Amid such fleeting emotions nothing so resembles love as the young
passion of an artist who tastes the first delicious anguish of his
destined fame and woe,--a passion daring yet timid, full of vague
confidence and sure discouragement. Is there a man, slender in
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton: use of a few properties, been transformed into something
intimate, "foreign," subtly suggestive of old
romantic scenes and sentiments. He tried to analyse the
trick, to find a clue to it in the way the chairs and
tables were grouped, in the fact that only two Jacqueminot
roses (of which nobody ever bought less than a
dozen) had been placed in the slender vase at his elbow,
and in the vague pervading perfume that was not
what one put on handkerchiefs, but rather like the
scent of some far-off bazaar, a smell made up of Turkish
coffee and ambergris and dried roses.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: in one's nature which, after long fasting, recognizes, when confronted
by the belongings of art, howsoever cheap and modest they may be,
that it has unconsciously been famishing and now has found nourishment.
I could not have believed that a rag carpet could feast me so,
and so content me; or that there could be such solace to the soul
in wall-paper and framed lithographs, and bright-colored tidies
and lamp-mats, and Windsor chairs, and varnished what-nots, with
sea-shells and books and china vases on them, and the score of little
unclassifiable tricks and touches that a woman's hand distributes
about a home, which one sees without knowing he sees them, yet would
miss in a moment if they were taken away. The delight that was
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