| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: you have him? I know, through a friend of Florine, certain secrets of
his which would drive him crazy."
"Florine?" said the countess. "Do you mean the actress?"
Marie had already heard that name from the lips of the watchman
Quillet; it now shot like a flash of lightning through her soul.
"Yes, his mistress," replied the count. "What is there so surprising
in that?"
"I thought Monsieur Nathan too busy to have a mistress. Do authors
have time to make love?"
"I don't say they love, my dear, but they are forced to LODGE
somewhere, like other men, and when they haven't a home of their own
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: off, Mrs. Stevenson tended a garden of salad and shalots. The
salad was devoured by the hen - which was her bane. The shalots
were served out a leaf at a time, and welcomed and relished like
peaches. Toddy and green cocoa-nuts were brought us daily. We
once had a present of fish from the king, and once of a turtle.
Sometimes we shot so-called plover along on the shore, sometimes
wild chicken in the bush. The rest of our diet was from tins.
Our occupations were very various. While some of the party would
be away sketching, Mr. Osbourne and I hammered away at a novel. We
read Gibbon and Carlyle aloud; we blew on flageolets, we strummed
on guitars; we took photographs by the light of the sun, the moon,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: arrived safe, and, as you may easily suppose, was very welcome to
my old inhabitants, who were now, with this addition, between sixty
and seventy people, besides little children, of which there were a
great many. I found letters at London from them all, by way of
Lisbon, when I came back to England.
I have now done with the island, and all manner of discourse about
it: and whoever reads the rest of my memorandums would do well to
turn his thoughts entirely from it, and expect to read of the
follies of an old man, not warned by his own harms, much less by
those of other men, to beware; not cooled by almost forty years'
miseries and disappointments - not satisfied with prosperity beyond
Robinson Crusoe |
