| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Passion in the Desert by Honore de Balzac: further than eye could reach in every direction, and glittered like
steel struck with bright light. It might have been a sea of looking-
glass, or lakes melted together in a mirror. A fiery vapor carried up
in surging waves made a perpetual whirlwind over the quivering land.
The sky was lit with an Oriental splendor of insupportable purity,
leaving naught for the imagination to desire. Heaven and earth were on
fire.
The silence was awful in its wild and terrible majesty. Infinity,
immensity, closed in upon the soul from every side. Not a cloud in the
sky, not a breath in the air, not a flaw on the bosom of the sand,
ever moving in diminutive waves; the horizon ended as at sea on a
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Distinguished Provincial at Paris by Honore de Balzac: himself, as the grave keeps the secrets of the dead. Yet the gay
bohemian of intellectual life, the great statesman who might have
changed the face of the world, fell as a private soldier in the
cloister of Saint-Merri; some shopkeeper's bullet struck down one of
the noblest creatures that ever trod French soil, and Michel Chrestien
died for other doctrines than his own. His Federation scheme was more
dangerous to the aristocracy of Europe than the Republican propaganda;
it was more feasible and less extravagant than the hideous doctrines
of indefinite liberty proclaimed by the young madcaps who assume the
character of heirs of the Convention. All who knew the noble plebeian
wept for him; there is not one of them but remembers, and often
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn: ascertain whether he had really been deceived. He found the anjitsu without
any difficulty; and, this time, its aged occupant invited him to enter.
When he had done so, the hermit humbly bowed down before him, exclaiming:--
"Ah! I am ashamed ! -- I amvery much ashamed! -- I am exceedingly
ashamed!"
"You need not be ashamed for having refused me shelter," said Muso. "you
directed me to the village yonder, where I was very kindly treated; and I
thank you for that favor.
"I can give no man shelter," the recluse made answer; -- and it is not for
the refusal that I am ashamed. I am ashamed only that you should have seen
me in my real shape,-- for it was I who devoured the corpse and the
Kwaidan |
