| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Country Doctor by Honore de Balzac: that he has within him the power of applying it in practical politics,
should keep his mind to himself, seize his opportunity and act; but if
he dwells in peaceful obscurity as a simple citizen, is it not sheer
lunacy to think to bring the great mass over to his opinion by means
of individual discussions? For all that, I am about to argue with you,
my dear pastor, for I am speaking before sensible men, each of whom is
accustomed always to bring his individual light to a common search for
the truth. My ideas may seem strange to you, but they are the outcome
of much thought caused by the calamities of the last forty years.
Universal suffrage, which finds such favor in the sight of those
persons who belong to the constitutional opposition, as it is called,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: behind by a burglar, and when she found the mirror smashed on the
floor she wasn't much better.
"There's going to be a death!" she wailed. "Oh, Miss Rachel,
there's going to be a death!"
"There will be," I said grimly, "if you don't keep quiet, Liddy
Allen."
And so we sat there until morning, wondering if the candle would
last until dawn, and arranging what trains we could take back to
town. If we had only stuck to that decision and gone back before
it was too late!
The sun came finally, and from my window I watched the trees
The Circular Staircase |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard: people like ourselves living on the farther side of the mountains
and the thorn forest, whereat they laughed. But afterwards a
very old woman came and told me that when she was a little girl
her grandfather had told her that in his youth his grandfather
had crossed the desert and the mountains, and pierced the thorn
forest, and seen a white people who lived in stone kraals beyond.
Of course, as this took the tale back some two hundred and fifty
years, the information was very indefinite; but still there it
was again, and on thinking it over I grew firmly convinced that
there was some truth in all these rumours, and equally firmly
determined to solve the mystery. Little did I guess in what
Allan Quatermain |
