| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Exiles by Honore de Balzac: "And since that, I tell you, I have never slept quietly in my bed. My
lord, who lodges over us, is of a surety more of a wizard than a
Christian. On my word as an officer, I shiver when that old man passes
near me; he never sleeps of nights; if I wake, his voice is ringing
like a bourdon of bells, and I hear him muttering incantations in the
language of hell. Have you ever seen him eat an honest crust of bread
or a hearth-cake made by a good Catholic baker? His brown skin has
been scorched and tanned by hell-fires. Marry, and I tell you his eyes
hold a spell like that of serpents. Jacqueline, I will have none of
those two men under my roof. I see too much of the law not to know
that it is well to have nothing to do with it.--You must get rid of
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Little Britain by Washington Irving: "Others," as Mr. Skryme is accustomed to say, "may go star-
gazing, and look for conjunctions in the heavens, but here is a
conjunction on the earth, near at home, and under our own eyes,
which surpasses all the signs and calculations of astrologers."
Since these portentous weathercocks have thus laid their heads
together, wonderful events had already occurred. The good
old king, notwithstanding that he had lived eighty-two years,
had all at once given up the ghost; another king had mounted
the throne; a royal duke had died suddenly,--another, in
France, had been murdered; there had been radical meetings in
all parts of the kingdom; the bloody scenes at Manchester; the
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Lesser Bourgeoisie by Honore de Balzac: snuff a minute out of a pocket lined with leather made in his
waistcoat. He looked into all his tradesmen's accounts; he went to
Saint-Denis to judge for himself the prices of things. Talma was his
friend; Talma taught him his gestures; nevertheless, he always refused
to give Talma the Legion of honor! The emperor mounted guard for a
sentinel who went to sleep, to save him from being shot. Those were
the things that made his soldiers adore him. Louis XVIII., who
certainly had some sense, was very unjust in calling him Monsieur de
Buonaparte. The defect of the present government is in letting itself
be led instead of leading. It holds itself too low. It is afraid of
men of energy. It ought to have torn up all the treaties of 1815 and
|
