| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: had discovered Victurnien's hiding place.
Victurnien was hurried into the house and installed in a room beyond
Chesnel's private office. No one could enter it except across the old
man's dead body.
"Ah! M. le Comte!" exclaimed Chesnel, notary no longer.
"Yes, monsieur," the Count answered, understanding his old friend's
exclamation. "I did not listen to you; and now I have fallen into the
depths, and I must perish."
"No, no," the good man answered, looking triumphantly from Mlle.
Armande to the Count. "I have sold my connection. I have been working
for a very long time now, and am thinking of retiring. By noon to-
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: little to do that made that!" might be put as epigraph on all
the song books of old France. Making such sorts of verse
belongs to the same class of pleasures as guessing acrostics
or "burying proverbs." It is almost purely formal, almost
purely verbal. It must be done gently and gingerly. It
keeps the mind occupied a long time, and never so intently as
to be distressing; for anything like strain is against the
very nature of the craft. Sometimes things go easily, the
refrains fall into their place as if of their own accord, and
it becomes something of the nature of an intellectual tennis;
you must make your poem as the rhymes will go, just as you
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy: confused silence was broken by the sedate, self-assured German
steward, who considered himself a good judge of the Russian
peasant, and who spoke Russian remarkably well. This strong,
over-fed man, and Nekhludoff himself, presented a striking
contrast to the peasants, with their thin, wrinkled faces and the
shoulder blades protruding beneath their coarse coats.
"Here's the Prince wanting to do you a favor, and to let the land
to you; only you are not worthy of it," said the steward.
"How are we not worthy of it, Vasili Karlovitch? Don't we work
for you? We were well satisfied with the deceased lady--God have
mercy on her soul--and the young Prince will not desert us now.
Resurrection |
