| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac: In spite of revolutionary principles, which made a hobby of republican
honesty, the management of public business in those days was by no
means clean. A political spy, a stock-jobber, a contractor, a man who
confiscated in collusion with the syndic of a commune the property of
emigres in order to sell them and buy them in, a minister, and a
general were all equally engaged in public business. From 1793 to 1799
du Bousquier was commissary of provisions to the French armies. He
lived in a magnificent hotel and was one of the matadors of finance,
did business with Ouvrard, kept open house, and led the scandalous
life of the period,--the life of a Cincinnatus, on sacks of corn
harvested without trouble, stolen rations, "little houses" full of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde: The Star-child
THE YOUNG KING
[TO MARGARET LADY BROOKE - THE RANEE OF SARAWAK]
It was the night before the day fixed for his coronation, and the
young King was sitting alone in his beautiful chamber. His
courtiers had all taken their leave of him, bowing their heads to
the ground, according to the ceremonious usage of the day, and had
retired to the Great Hall of the Palace, to receive a few last
lessons from the Professor of Etiquette; there being some of them
who had still quite natural manners, which in a courtier is, I need
hardly say, a very grave offence.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Criminal Sociology by Enrico Ferri: attached--a value purely negative.
This progressive, gradual, or Irish system has obtained a
supremacy in Europe, so that even Belgium, the classic land of the
cellular system, reconsidered the ideas which it had based on
daily experience, and was the first continental country to
introduce conditional sentences (in 1888), which are the fruit of
short sentences and cellular punishments.
I do not deny that this progressive system is better than the
others, though we must not forget that the almost miraculous
effects of amendment and decrease of recidivism (which indeed are
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