| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Letters from England by Elizabeth Davis Bancroft: the seat of the ambassadors, on the left, of their ladies. Just in
front of the throne is the wool-sack of the Lord Chancellor, looking
like a drawing-room divan, covered with crimson velvet. Below this
are rows of seats for the judges, who are all in their wigs and
scarlet robes; the bishops and the peers, all in robes of scarlet
and ermine. Opposite the throne at the lower end is the Bar of the
Commons. On the right of the Queen's chair is a vacant one, on
which is carved the three plumes, the insignia of the Prince of
Wales, who will occupy it when he is seven or nine years old; on the
left Prince Albert sits.
The seat assigned me was in the front row, and quite open, like a
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Dracula by Bram Stoker: Arthur went off with him, casting back a longing look on Lucy's face,
which lay in her pillow, almost whiter than the lawn.
She lay quite still, and I looked around the room to see that all
was as it should be. I could see that the Professor had carried
out in this room, as in the other, his purpose of using the garlic.
The whole of the window sashes reeked with it, and round Lucy's neck,
over the silk handkerchief which Van Helsing made her keep on,
was a rough chaplet of the same odorous flowers.
Lucy was breathing somewhat stertorously, and her face was at its worst,
for the open mouth showed the pale gums. Her teeth, in the dim,
uncertain light, seemed longer and sharper than they had been in the morning.
Dracula |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: elected National Assembly stands in a metaphysical, but the elected
President in a personal, relation to the nation. True enough, the
National Assembly presents in its several Representatives the various
sides of the national spirit, but, in the President, this spirit is
incarnated. As against the National Assembly, the President possesses a
sort of divine right, he is by the grace of the people.
Thetis, the sea-goddess, had prophesied to Achilles that he would die in
the bloom of youth. The Constitution, which had its weak spot, like
Achilles, had also, like Achilles, the presentiment that it would depart
by premature death. It was enough for the pure republicans, engaged at
the work of framing a constitution, to cast a glance from the misty
|
