| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: the poets or painters who have arrayed the world in a dimmer and
fainter beauty, imperfectly copied from the richness of their
visions.
The night was now his time for the slow progress of re-creating
the one idea to which all his intellectual activity referred
itself. Always at the approach of dusk he stole into the town,
locked himself within his shop, and wrought with patient delicacy
of touch for many hours. Sometimes he was startled by the rap of
the watchman, who, when all the world should be asleep, had
caught the gleam of lamplight through the crevices of Owen
Warland's shutters. Daylight, to the morbid sensibility of his
Mosses From An Old Manse |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: I know not where, lad,' he went on, glancing at me with blank,
lightless eyes, 'but I am going away from this.--I have carpology,'
said he (the use of the technical term showing how clear and accurate
his mental processes were even now). 'I thought the room was full of
live gold, and I got up to catch some of it.--To whom will all mine
go, I wonder? Not to the crown; I have left a will, look for it,
Grotius. La belle Hollandaise had a daughter; I once saw the girl
somewhere or other, in the Rue Vivienne, one evening. They call her
"La Torpille," I believe; she is as pretty as pretty can be; look her
up, Grotius. You are my executor; take what you like; help yourself.
There are Strasburg pies, there, and bags of coffee, and sugar, and
Gobseck |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: outstrip all competitors in the art of conceiving and
rendering permanent deformity; and to do all this in what
is, by nature, one of the most agreeable neighbourhoods
in Britain:- what are we to say, but that this also is a
distinction, hard to earn although not greatly
worshipful?
Indifferent buildings give pain to the sensitive;
but these things offend the plainest taste. It is a
danger which threatens the amenity of the town; and as
this eruption keeps spreading on our borders, we have
ever the farther to walk among unpleasant sights, before
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