| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: honest living. Yet I have never met with more sterling honesty than in
this man and wife. For five years after I left the quarter, Mere
Vaillant used to come on my birthday with a bunch of flowers and some
oranges for me--she that had never a sixpence to put by! Want had
drawn us together. I never could give her more than a ten-franc piece,
and often I had to borrow the money for the occasion. This will
perhaps explain my promise to go to the wedding; I hoped to efface
myself in these poor people's merry-making.
The banquet and the ball were given on a first floor above a wineshop
in the Rue de Charenton. It was a large room, lighted by oil lamps
with tin reflectors. A row of wooden benches ran round the walls,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: the house to be a part of the garden, for the road is sunken and
hemmed in on one side by the terrace, on the other side by a Norman
hedge. The terraces being very well managed put enough distance
between the house and the river to avoid the inconvenience of too
great proximity to water, without losing the charms of it. Below the
house are the stables, coach-house, green-houses, and kitchen, the
various openings to which form an arcade. The roof is charmingly
rounded at the angles, and bears mansarde windows with carved mullions
and leaden finials on their gables. This roof, no doubt much neglected
during the Revolution, is stained by a sort of mildew produced by
lichens and the reddish moss which grows on houses exposed to the sun.
The Lily of the Valley |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: only satisfy to some extent the popular taste, but he must feel
that the public is in sympathy with him. If in this period of
social decadence and gloom he endeavours to represent gay,
brilliant, or triumphant ideas, he will find himself left to his
own resources; and, as Taine rightly says, the power of an
isolated man is always insignificant. His work will be likely to
be mediocre. If he attempts to write like Rabelais or paint like
Rubens, he will get neither assistance nor sympathy from a public
which prefers the pictures of Rembrandt, the melodies of Chopin,
and the poetry of Heine.
Having thus explained his position by this extreme instance,
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
