| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Prince of Bohemia by Honore de Balzac: de Rhetore; but one day, five years after her marriage, she played
with her cat to such purpose that the coverlet--furbelows, flounces,
and all--was torn to shreds, and replaced by a sensible quilt, a quilt
that was a quilt, and not a symptom of the peculiar form of insanity
which drives these women to make up by an insensate luxury for the
childish days when they lived on raw apples, to quote the expression
of a journalist. The day when the bed-spread was torn to tatters
marked a new epoch in her married life.
"Cursy was remarkable for his ferocious industry. Nobody suspects the
source to which Paris owes the patch-and-powder eighteenth century
vaudevilles that flooded the stage. Those thousand-and-one
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock: the casement made us change our purpose; and what followed you
can tell better than I can, being indeed masters of the subject."
"You are a merry knave," said the baron, "and here is a cup
of wine for you."
"Gramercy," said the squire, "and better late than never:
but I lacked a cup of this before. Had I been pot-valiant, I
had held you play."
"Sir knight," said Marian, "this is the third time you have sought
the life of my lord and of me, for mine is interwoven with his.
And do you think me so spiritless as to believe that I can be yours
by compulsion? Tempt me not again, for the next time shall be the last,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Ten Years Later by Alexandre Dumas: from time to time cast a look full of regret and hopeless
affection at Madame. The princess, in the midst of her
elation of spirits, divided her attention between the king,
who was playing with her, Monsieur, who quietly joked her
about her enormous winnings, and De Guiche, who exhibited an
extravagant delight. Of Buckingham she took but little
notice; for her, this fugitive, this exile, was now simply a
remembrance, no longer a man. Light hearts are thus
constituted; while they themselves continue untouched, they
roughly break off with every one who may possibly interfere
with their little calculations of selfish comfort. Madame
Ten Years Later |
