| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: purchasing Mexican scrip, and thereby became the proprietor of a
province; which, however, so far as Peter could find out, was
situated where he might have had an empire for the same
money,--in the clouds. From a search after this valuable real
estate Peter returned so gaunt and threadbare that, on reaching
New England, the scarecrows in the cornfields beckoned to him, as
he passed by. "They did but flutter in the wind," quoth Peter
Goldthwaite. No, Peter, they beckoned, for the scarecrows knew
their brother!
At the period of our story his whole visible income would not
have paid the tax of the old mansion in which we find him. It was
Twice Told Tales |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: up to his art, he had married from inclination the dowerless daughter
of a general. At first the mothers of his pupils bought their
daughters themselves to the studio; then they were satisfied to send
them alone, after knowing the master's principles and the pains he
took to deserve their confidence.
It was the artist's intention to take no pupils but young ladies
belonging to rich families of good position, in order to meet with no
complaints as to the composition of his classes. He even refused to
take girls who wished to become artists; for to them he would have
been obliged to give certain instructions without which no talent
could advance in the profession. Little by little his prudence and the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: mind, and I sincerely wish that all my comrades would do the same.
"'I expected you, my son,' he said, when I approached for his
blessing. 'The path awaits you in which your life is henceforth to
flow. Your path is pure--desert it not. You have talent: talent is the
most priceless of God's gifts--destroy it not. Search out, subject all
things to your brush; but in all see that you find the hidden soul,
and most of all, strive to attain to the grand secret of creation.
Blessed is the elect one who masters that! There is for him no mean
object in nature. In lowly themes the artist creator is as great as in
great ones: in the despicable there is nothing for him to despise, for
it passes through the purifying fire of his mind. An intimation of
Taras Bulba and Other Tales |
