| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: meeting, preliminary to the workers' fete of the 1st of May. The
watchword of the meeting was `Calm and Tranquillity!'
"Comrade G---- alludes to the socialists as `idiots' and
`humbugs.'
"At these words there is an exchange of invectives and orators
and audience come to blows. Chairs, tables, and benches are
converted into weapons," &c., &c.
It is not to be imagined for a moment that this description of
discussion is peculiar to a determined class of electors and
dependent on their social position. In every anonymous assembly
whatever, though it be composed exclusively of highly educated
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: fluid, and passed it lightly over the right eyelid of the corpse.
The eye unclosed. . . .
"Aha!" said Don Juan. He gripped the flask tightly, as we clutch
in dreams the branch from which we hang suspended over a
precipice.
For the eye was full of life. It was a young child's eye set in a
death's head; the light quivered in the depths of its youthful
liquid brightness. Shaded by the long dark lashes, it sparkled
like the strange lights that travelers see in lonely places in
winter nights. The eye seemed as if it would fain dart fire at
Don Juan; he saw it thinking, upbraiding, condemning, uttering
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederic: I don't know that they like one another specially,
but I do know that they are not what you might call
popular with people outside. Now, a new preacher
at the Presbyterian church, or even the Baptist--
he might have a chance to create talk, and make a stir.
But Methodist--no! People who don't belong won't come near
the Methodist church here so long as there's any other
place with a roof on it to go to. Give a dog a bad name,
you know. Well, the Methodists here have got a bad name;
and if you could preach like Henry Ward Beecher himself you
wouldn't change it, or get folks to come and hear you."
The Damnation of Theron Ware |
