| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: exercise their power--The necessary consequences of the power of
the crowd--Crowds unable to play a part other than
destructive--The dissolution of worn-out civilisations is the
work of the crowd--General ignorance of the psychology of crowds--
Importance of the study of crowds for legislators and statesmen.
The great upheavals which precede changes of civilisations such
as the fall of the Roman Empire and the foundation of the Arabian
Empire, seem at first sight determined more especially by
political transformations, foreign invasion, or the overthrow of
dynasties. But a more attentive study of these events shows that
behind their apparent causes the real cause is generally seen to
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Case of The Lamp That Went Out by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: slipped in behind him, seating himself inconspicuously by the door.
At a sign from the commissioner the visitor began. "I am an
employee of Braun & Co. I have the desk next to Leopold Winkler,
during the year that he has been with us - the year and a quarter to
be exact -"
"Ah, then you know him rather well?"
"Why, yes. At least we were together all day, although I never met
him outside the office."
"Then you cannot tell us much about his private life?"
"No, sir, but there was something happened on Monday, and in talking
it over with Mr. Braun, he suggested that I should come to you and
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: summary elliptic method as the book you have been reading and
admiring.' I was here brought up with a reflection
exceedingly just in itself, but which, as the sequel shows, I
failed to profit by. I saw that Marryat, not less than
Homer, Milton, and Virgil, profited by the choice of a
familiar and legendary subject; so that he prepared his
readers on the very title-page; and this set me cudgelling my
brains, if by any chance I could hit upon some similar belief
to be the centre-piece of my own meditated fiction. In the
course of this vain search there cropped up in my memory a
singular case of a buried and resuscitated fakir, which I had
|
