The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Two Poets by Honore de Balzac: income had changed her ways and habits; but both she and her children
confronted evil days bravely enough. She sold the druggist's shop in
the Grand' Rue de L'Houmeau, the principal suburb of Angouleme; but it
was impossible for even one woman to exist on the three hundred francs
of income brought in by the investment of the purchase-money, so the
mother and daughter accepted the position, and worked to earn a
living. The mother went out as a monthly nurse, and for her gentle
manners was preferred to any other among the wealthy houses, where she
lived without expense to her children, and earned some seven francs a
week. To save her son the embarrassment of seeing his mother reduced
to this humble position, she assumed the name of Madame Charlotte; and
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: Humanities." The wretched regent-master, pale and suffering, sits
up all night preparing his lecture, biting his nails and thumping
his desk; and falls asleep for a few minutes, to start up at the
sound of the four-o'clock bell, and be in school by five, his Virgil
in one hand, and his rod in the other, trying to do work on his own
account at old manuscripts, and bawling all the while at his
wretched boys, who cheat him, and pay each other to answer to
truants' names. The class is all wrong. "One is barefoot,
another's shoe is burst, another cries, another writes home. Then
comes the rod, the sound of blows, and howls; and the day passes in
tears." "Then mass, then another lesson, then more blows; there is
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Poems by T. S. Eliot: The masters of the subtle schools
Are controversial, polymath.
Sweeney Among the Nightingales
[Greek text inserted here]
Apeneck Sweeney spreads his knees
Letting his arms hang down to laugh,
The zebra stripes along his jaw
Swelling to maculate giraffe.
The circles of the stormy moon
Slide westward toward the River Plate,
Death and the Raven drift above
|