| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Poor and Proud by Oliver Optic: they engaged me."
"If you want me to go to the mayor's house with you, I will,"
said Katy, who did not clearly comprehend Simon's wishes.
"Well, I think I will not go myself," replied Simon.
"Why not?"
"I do not like to place myself in a humiliating posture before
great men. If I were mayor of Boston, I should like to do him the
favor which I ask for myself. When I am--"
"You haven't asked him, Master Simon."
"In a word, Katy, I want you to ask him for me. You will do me a
great favor."
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Pierrette by Honore de Balzac: to her; the slightest sound or movement kept her on the qui vive; she
watched Pierrette with gloomy intentness.
"That miserable little wretch will kill me," she said.
Sylvie's severity to her cousin reached the point of refined cruelty,
and made the deplorable condition of the poor girl worse daily. She
had fever regularly, and the pains in her head became intolerable. By
the end of the week even the visitors at the house noticed her
suffering face, which would have touched to pity all selfishness less
cruel than theirs. It happened that Doctor Neraud, possibly by Vinet's
advice, did not come to the house during that week. The colonel,
knowing himself suspected by Sylvie, was afraid to risk his marriage
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: a lyceum lecture, (CONCIO POPULARIS,) at the Temple of Mercury.
The journals (PAPYRI) of the day ("Tempora Quotidiana," -
"Tribuinus Quirinalis," - "Praeco Romanus," and the rest) gave
abstracts of it, one of which I have translated and modernized, as
being a substitute for the analysis I intended to make.
IV. Kal. Mart. . . . .
The lecture at the Temple of Mercury, last evening, was well
attended by the ELITE of our great city. Two hundred thousand
sestertia were thought to have been represented in the house. The
doors were besieged by a mob of shabby fellows, (ILLOTUM VULGUS,)
who were at length quieted after two or three had been somewhat
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
