| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Country Doctor by Honore de Balzac: hay in a sudden fashion that drew a startled cry from the boldest.
"He, old boy! you are forgetting Poniatowski's Red Lancers, the
Cuirassiers, the Dragoons, and the whole boiling. Whenever Napoleon
grew tired of seeing his battalions gain no ground towards the end of
a victory, he would say to Murat, 'Here, you! cut them in two for me!'
and we set out first at a trot, and then at a gallop, ONE, TWO! and
cut a way clean through the ranks of the enemy; it was like slicing an
apple in two with a knife. Why, a charge of cavalry is nothing more
nor less than a column of cannon balls."
"And how about the pontooners?" cried the deaf veteran.
"There, there! my children," Genestas went on, repenting in his
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from To-morrow by Joseph Conrad: restless sea itself, seemed stopped. There was not
a sound--no whisper of life, as though she were
alone and lost in that stony country of which she
had heard, where madmen go looking for gold and
spurn the find.
Captain Hagberd, inside his dark house, had
kept on the alert. A window ran up; and in the
silence of the stony country a voice spoke above her
head, high up in the black air--the voice of mad-
ness, lies and despair--the voice of inextinguish-
able hope. "Is he gone yet--that information
To-morrow |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: dead:-- (Thucyd.)
There is a tribute of deeds and of words. The departed have already had
the first, when going forth on their destined journey they were attended on
their way by the state and by their friends; the tribute of words remains
to be given to them, as is meet and by law ordained. For noble words are a
memorial and a crown of noble actions, which are given to the doers of them
by the hearers. A word is needed which will duly praise the dead and
gently admonish the living, exhorting the brethren and descendants of the
departed to imitate their virtue, and consoling their fathers and mothers
and the survivors, if any, who may chance to be alive of the previous
generation. What sort of a word will this be, and how shall we rightly
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