| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: us had enough knowledge of life to divine all that our guide had not
told of that triple existence. The anguish of those three beings rose
up before us as if we had seen it in a drama, culminating in that of
the father expiating his crime. We dared not look at the rock where
sat the fatal man who held the whole countryside in awe. A few clouds
dimmed the skies; mists were creeping up from the horizon. We walked
through a landscape more bitterly gloomy than any our eyes had ever
rested on, a nature that seemed sickly, suffering, covered with salty
crust, the eczema, it might be called, of earth. Here, the soil was
mapped out in squares of unequal size and shape, all encased with
enormous ridges or embankments of gray earth and filled with water, to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: usual to the Sucking Calf he went home, drew out from his desk the
journal of his life, and recorded the fact in the following manner:--
"To-day, July 3, 1823, overtaken by extraordinary perspiration, a
sign, perhaps, of the sweating-sickness, a malady which prevails
in Champagne. I am about to consult Doctor Haudry. The disease
first appeared as I reached the highest part of the quai des
Ecoles."
Suddenly, having taken off his hat, he became aware that the
mysterious sweat had some cause independent of his own person. He
wiped his face, examined the hat, and could find nothing, for he did
not venture to take out the lining. All this he noted in his
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Dreams by Olive Schreiner: And God asked me why I was crying. But I could not answer for joy.
And the face turned from its work, and the light fell upon me. Then it
grew so bright I could not see things separately; and which were God, or
the man, or I, I could not tell; we were all blended. I cried to God,
"Where are you?" but there was no answer, only music and light.
Afterwards, when it had grown so dark again that I could see things
separately, I found that I was standing there wrapped tight in my little
old, brown, earthly cloak, and God and the man were separated from each
other, and from me.
I did not dare say I would go and make music beside the man. I knew I
could not reach even to his knee, nor move the instrument he played. But I
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