| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: that charms the eye; in short, the grace and dignity that characterize
the /Procuratie/ in the piazetta at Venice. Stone walls, admirably
decorated, keep the rooms at a pleasantly cool temperature. Verandas
outside, painted in fresco, screen off the glare. The flooring
throughout is the old Venetian inlay of marbles, cut into unfading
flowers.
The furniture, like that of all Italian palaces, was rich with
handsome silks, judiciously employed, and valuable pictures favorably
hung; some by the Genoese priest, known as /il Capucino/, several by
Leonardo da Vinci, Carlo Dolci, Tintoretto, and Titian.
The shelving gardens were full of the marvels where money has been
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Twilight Land by Howard Pyle: and then nothing would do but he must take a peep inside the nut
to see if Ill-Luck was really there. So he picked and pulled at
the wooden plug, until at last out it came; and--phst! pop! out
came Ill-Luck along with it.
Plague take the Fiddler! say I.
"Listen," says Ill-Luck. "It has been many a long day that I have
been in that hazel-nut, and you are the man that has let me out;
for once in a way I will do a good turn to a poor human body."
Therewith, and without giving the Fiddler time to speak a word,
Ill-Luck caught him up by the belt, and--whiz! away he flew like
a bullet, over hill and over valley; over moor and over mountain,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: III. 1. Plato speaks of pleasure as indefinite, as relative, as a
generation, and in all these points of view as in a category distinct from
good. For again we must repeat, that to the Greek 'the good is of the
nature of the finite,' and, like virtue, either is, or is nearly allied to,
knowledge. The modern philosopher would remark that the indefinite is
equally real with the definite. Health and mental qualities are in the
concrete undefined; they are nevertheless real goods, and Plato rightly
regards them as falling under the finite class. Again, we are able to
define objects or ideas, not in so far as they are in the mind, but in so
far as they are manifested externally, and can therefore be reduced to rule
and measure. And if we adopt the test of definiteness, the pleasures of
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