| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: passes without thoughts of you, for my whole being is bound up in you,
and if you ceased to be its animating principle, every part would
ache.
Now, Louise, can you realize the torture to me of knowing that I had
displeased you, while entirely ignorant of the cause? The ideal double
life which seemed so fair was cut short. My heart turned to ice within
me as, hopeless of any other explanation, I concluded that you had
ceased to love me. With heavy heart, and yet not wholly without
comfort, I was falling back upon my old post as servant; then your
letter came and turned all to joy. Oh! might I but listen for ever to
such chiding!
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle: until he was swallowed up by the forest.
The early gray of the coming morn was just beginning to lighten
the black sky toward the eastward when Little John and six more
of the band came rapidly across the open toward the nunnery.
They saw no one, for the sisters were all hidden away
from sight, having been frightened by Little John's words.
Up the stone stair they ran, and a great sound of weeping
was presently heard. After a while this ceased, and then
came the scuffling and shuffling of men's feet as they
carried a heavy weight down the steep and winding stairs.
So they went forth from the nunnery, and, as they passed through
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: husbands and wives, and renewed daily. A milder form of sorrow finds
its inexpensive and lasting remembrancer in the coarse and ugly
but indestructible 'immortelle'--which is a wreath or cross or some
such emblem, made of rosettes of black linen, with sometimes a yellow
rosette at the conjunction of the cross's bars--kind of sorrowful
breast-pin, so to say. The immortelle requires no attention:
you just hang it up, and there you are; just leave it alone, it will take
care of your grief for you, and keep it in mind better than you can;
stands weather first-rate, and lasts like boiler-iron.
On sunny days, pretty little chameleons--gracefullest of legged reptiles--
creep along the marble fronts of the vaults, and catch flies. Their changes
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