| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Horse's Tale by Mark Twain: reached them, and therefore were not recognizable as terrors when
she got to them. Well, she is a daring little rider, now, and is
perfect in what she knows of horsemanship. By-and-by she will know
the art like a West Point cadet, and will exercise it as
fearlessly. She doesn't know anything about side-saddles. Does
that distress you? And she is a fine performer, without any saddle
at all. Does that discomfort you? Do not let it; she is not in
any danger, I give you my word.
You said that if my heart was old and tired she would refresh it,
and you said truly. I do not know how I got along without her,
before. I was a forlorn old tree, but now that this blossoming
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: after having built the Saint-Georges sewer, on rock and concrete
in the fluid sands, after having directed the formidable lowering of
the flooring of the vault timber in the Notre-Dame-de-Nazareth branch,
Duleau the engineer died. There are no bulletins for such acts of
bravery as these, which are more useful, nevertheless, than the brutal
slaughter of the field of battle.
[59] Mustards.
The sewers of Paris in 1832 were far from being what they are
to-day. Bruneseau had given the impulse, but the cholera was
required to bring about the vast reconstruction which took place
later on. It is surprising to say, for example, that in 1821,
Les Miserables |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gambara by Honore de Balzac: way; the wife, too, did not earn much by her needle, and they were
compelled to turn their talents to account in the lowest form of
employment. They would go out together in the dark to the Champs
Elysees and sing duets, which Gambara, poor fellow, accompanied on a
wretched guitar. On the way, Marianna, who on these expeditions
covered her head with a sort of veil of coarse muslin, would take her
husband to the grocer's shop in the Faubourg Saint-Honore and give him
two or three thimblefuls of brandy to make him tipsy; otherwise he
could not play. Then they would stand up together in front of the
smart people sitting on the chairs, and one of the greatest geniuses
of the time, the unrecognized Orpheus of Modern Music, would perform
Gambara |
