| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: they put off impurity, along with the gross earthly substance that
involves it. We must not stain our page with any contemporary
scandal, to a similar purport, that may have been whispered
against the Judge. The Puritan, again, an autocrat in his own
household, had worn out three wives, and, merely by the remorseless
weight and hardness of his character in the conjugal relation,
had sent them, one after another, broken-hearted, to their graves.
Here the parallel, in some sort, fails. The Judge had wedded but
a single wife, and lost her in the third or fourth year of their
marriage. There was a fable, however,--for such we choose to
consider it, though, not impossibly, typical of Judge Pyncheon's
House of Seven Gables |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: Fearing to present himself too late to the old silversmith, the young
nobleman now went up to the door of the Malemaison intending to knock,
when, on looking at it, his attention was excited by a sort of vision,
which the writers of those days would have called "cornue,"--perhaps
with reference to horns and hoofs. He rubbed his eyes to clear his
sight, and a thousand diverse sentiments passed through his mind at
the spectacle before him. On each side of the door was a face framed
in a species of loophole. At first he took these two faces for
grotesque masks carved in stone, so angular, distorted, projecting,
motionless, discolored were they; but the cold air and the moonlight
presently enabled him to distinguish the faint white mist which living
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte: first whim; and, when I stretched my hand out cordially, such bloom
and light and bliss rose to your young, wistful features, I had much
ado often to avoid straining you then and there to my heart."
"Don't talk any more of those days, sir," I interrupted, furtively
dashing away some tears from my eyes; his language was torture to
me; for I knew what I must do--and do soon--and all these
reminiscences, and these revelations of his feelings only made my
work more difficult.
"No, Jane," he returned: "what necessity is there to dwell on the
Past, when the Present is so much surer--the Future so much
brighter?"
Jane Eyre |
