| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: pay for the triumphs of the last month in solid cash, and bespeak
those of the month ahead. In the days of Saint-Genest, the canonized
comedian who fulfilled his duties in a pious manner and wore a hair
shirt, we must suppose that an actor's life did not demand this
incessant activity. Sometimes Florine, seized with a bourgeois desire
to get out into the country and gather flowers, pretends to the
manager that she is ill.
But even these mechanical operations are nothing in comparison with
the intrigues to be carried on, the pains of wounded vanity to be
endured,--preferences shown by authors, parts taken away or given to
others, exactions of the male actors, spite of rivals, naggings of the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe: bow with alacrity, and departing.
It will be perceived, as has been before intimated, that
Master Sam had a native talent that might, undoubtedly, have raised
him to eminence in political life,--a talent of making capital out
of everything that turned up, to be invested for his own especial
praise and glory; and having done up his piety and humility, as he
trusted, to the satisfaction of the parlor, he clapped his palm-leaf
on his head, with a sort of rakish, free-and-easy air, and proceeded
to the dominions of Aunt Chloe, with the intention of flourishing
largely in the kitchen.
"I'll speechify these yer niggers," said Sam to himself,
Uncle Tom's Cabin |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An International Episode by Henry James: it is very pleasant in England, for English people.
I don't know myself; I have been there very little.
I have been a great deal abroad, but I am always on the Continent.
I must say I'm extremely fond of Paris; you know we Americans
always are; we go there when we die. Did you ever hear that before?
That was said by a great wit, I mean the good Americans;
but we are all good; you'll see that for yourself.
All I know of England is London, and all I know of London is
that place on that little corner, you know, where you buy jackets--
jackets with that coarse braid and those big buttons.
They make very good jackets in London, I will do you
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