| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Distinguished Provincial at Paris by Honore de Balzac: first orgy in a new and strange world; why should I not know, for
once, the delights which the great lords of the eighteenth century
sought so eagerly of wantons of the Opera? Must one not first learn of
courtesans and actresses the delights, the perfections, the
transports, the resources, the subtleties of love, if only to
translate them afterwards into the regions of a higher love than this?
And what is all this, after all, but the poetry of the senses? Two
months ago these women seemed to me to be goddesses guarded by dragons
that no one dared approach; I was envying Lousteau just now, but here
is another handsomer than Florine; why should I not profit by her
fancy, when the greatest nobles buy a night with such women with their
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Amazing Interlude by Mary Roberts Rinehart: word, an offensive glance. But, though she never knew this, many half
articulate and wholly earnest prayers were offered for her in those
little churches behind the lines where sometimes the men slept, and often
they prayed.
She was very businesslike. She sent home to the Ladies' Aid Society a
weekly record of what had been done: So many bowls of soup; so many
cups of chocolate; so many minor injuries dressed. Because, very soon,
she found first aid added to her activities. She sickened somewhat at
first. Later she allowed to Marie much of the serving of food, and in
the little salle manger she had ready on the table basins, water, cotton,
iodine and bandages.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Alcibiades II by Platonic Imitator: madmen are wont to inflict? Consider, my dear friend: may it not be quite
otherwise?
ALCIBIADES: Why, Socrates, how is that possible? I must have been
mistaken.
SOCRATES: So it seems to me. But perhaps we may consider the matter
thus:--
ALCIBIADES: How?
SOCRATES: I will tell you. We think that some are sick; do we not?
ALCIBIADES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And must every sick person either have the gout, or be in a
fever, or suffer from ophthalmia? Or do you believe that a man may labour
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