| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Simple Soul by Gustave Flaubert: side of the church, filled the stalls of the choir; the priest stood
beside the reading-desk; on one stained window of the side-aisle the
Holy Ghost hovered over the Virgin; on another one, Mary knelt before
the Child Jesus, and behind the alter, a wooden group represented
Saint Michael felling the dragon.
The priest first read a condensed lesson of sacred history. Felicite
evoked Paradise, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, the blazing cities,
the dying nations, the shattered idols; and out of this she developed
a great respect for the Almighty and a great fear of His wrath. Then,
when she had listened to the Passion, she wept. Why had they crucified
Him who loved little children, nourished the people, made the blind
A Simple Soul |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: steadfastly averred that he felt an invisible thumb and fingers
with as vivid a sensation as before the real ones were amputated.
A maimed and miserable wretch he was; but one, nevertheless, whom
the world could not trample on, and had no right to scorn, either
in this or any previous stage of his misfortunes, since he had
still kept up the courage and spirit of a man, asked nothing in
charity, and with his one hand--and that the left one--fought a
stern battle against want and hostile circumstances.
Among the throng, too, came another personage, who, with certain
points of similarity to Lawyer Giles, had many more of
difference. It was the village doctor; a man of some fifty years,
The Snow Image |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: economy, which God knows I merited, I was told by this--why must
I call her woman?--'that it would go against her conscience to
recommend a kept mistress.' Tears started in my eyes, burning tears;
for there are situations in which a wretch is humbled by the contempt
they are conscious they do not deserve.
"I returned to the metropolis; but the solitude of a poor
lodging was inconceivably dreary, after the society I had enjoyed.
To be cut off from human converse, now I had been taught to relish
it, was to wander a ghost among the living. Besides, I foresaw, to
aggravate the severity of my fate, that my little pittance would
soon melt away. I endeavoured to obtain needlework; but, not having
|
