| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: in fusion, the causes of life, life antecedent to life, and what
it must be in its incubation or ever it IS, it must be confessed
that, unfortunately, everything in him was purely personal.
Isolated during his life by his egoism, that egoism is now
suicidal of his glory. On his tomb there is no proclaiming statue
to repeat to posterity the mysteries which genius seeks out at
its own cost.
But perhaps Desplein's genius was answerable for his beliefs, and
for that reason mortal. To him the terrestrial atmosphere was a
generative envelope; he saw the earth as an egg within its shell;
and not being able to determine whether the egg or the hen first
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: dispose the concealing veil in the right folds. She took his
gaiety from him--since it had to pass with them for gaiety--as she
took everything else; but she certainly so far justified by her
unerring touch his finer sense of the degree to which he had ended
by convincing her. SHE at least never spoke of the secret of his
life except as "the real truth about you," and she had in fact a
wonderful way of making it seem, as such, the secret of her own
life too. That was in fine how he so constantly felt her as
allowing for him; he couldn't on the whole call it anything else.
He allowed for himself, but she, exactly, allowed still more;
partly because, better placed for a sight of the matter, she traced
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: first number appeared. On Friday the 2nd of April 'MR.
TATLER became speechless.' Its history was not all one
success; for the editor (who applies to himself the words of
Iago, 'I am nothing if I am not critical') overstepped the
bounds of caution, and found himself seriously embroiled with
the powers that were. There appeared in No. XVI. a most
bitter satire upon Sir John Leslie, in which he was compared
to Falstaff, charged with puffing himself, and very prettily
censured for publishing only the first volume of a class-
book, and making all purchasers pay for both. Sir John
Leslie took up the matter angrily, visited Carfrae the
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