| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: such delightful fetes, now lived in a small apartment of five rooms,--
an antechamber, dining-room, salon, one bed-chamber, and a dressing-
room, with two women-servants only.
"Ah! she is devoted to her son," said that clever creature, Madame
d'Espard, "and devoted without ostentation; she is happy. Who would
ever have believed so frivolous a woman was capable of such persistent
resolution! Our good archbishop has, consequently, greatly encouraged
her; he is most kind to her, and has just induced the old Comtesse de
Cinq-Cygne to pay her a visit."
Let us admit a truth! One must be a queen to know how to abdicate, and
to descend with dignity from a lofty position which is never wholly
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Falk by Joseph Conrad: was not an athlete. He was a strong man, suscep-
tible to female charms, and not afraid of dirt.
And thus with Falk, who was a strong man. He
was extremely strong, just as the girl (since I
must think of them together) was magnificently at-
tractive by the masterful power of flesh and blood,
expressed in shape, in size, in attitude--that is by
a straight appeal to the senses. His mind mean-
time, preoccupied with respectability, quailed be-
fore Schomberg's tongue and seemed absolutely
impervious to my protestations; and I went so far
Falk |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: neckerchiefs--who were always in evidence, rowing gondolas with
clumsy oars, meeting the steamboat at the wharf several times a
day, and filling the miniature garden of the hotel with rustic
greetings and early Salzkammergut attitudes. After much
conjecture, I learned that they were the family and friends of a
newspaper editor from Vienna. They had the literary instinct for
local colour.
The fishing at Hallstatt is at Obertraun. There is a level stretch
of land above the lake, where the river flows peaceably, and the
fish have leisure to feed and grow. It is leased to a peasant, who
makes a business of supplying the hotels with fish. He was quite
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