| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Damaged Goods by Upton Sinclair: "How charming you are, my poor Henriette! You believe everything
you are told. I, for my part, divined right away the truth. The
nurse was simply playing a game on us; she wanted a raise. Will
you bet? Come, I'll bet you something. What would you like to
bet? You don't want to? Come, I'll bet you a lovely necklace--
you know, with a big pearl."
"No," said Henriette, who had suddenly lost her mood of gayety.
"I should be too much afraid of winning."
"Stop!" laughed her husband. "Don't you believe I love her as
much as you love her--my little duck? Do you know how old she
is? I mean her EXACT age?"
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: longer bear a crop, and their suckers have formed a thicket. The
espaliers are like a copse. The paths, once graveled, are overgrown
with purslane; but, to be accurate there is no trace of a path.
"Looking down from the hilltop, to which cling the ruins of the old
castle of the Dukes of Vendome, the only spot whence the eye can see
into this enclosure, we think that at a time, difficult now to
determine, this spot of earth must have been the joy of some country
gentleman devoted to roses and tulips, in a word, to horticulture, but
above all a lover of choice fruit. An arbor is visible, or rather the
wreck of an arbor, and under it a table still stands not entirely
destroyed by time. At the aspect of this garden that is no more, the
La Grande Breteche |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Profits of Religion by Upton Sinclair: building up the Junker dream. A court official--the
Oberhofprediger--was set up, and from that time on the
Hohenzollerns were the most pious criminals in Europe. Frederick
the Great, the ancestral genius, was an atheist and a scoffer,
but he believed devoutly in religion for his subjects. He said:
"If my soldiers were to begin to think, not one would remain in
the ranks." And Carlyle, instinctive friend of autocrats, tells
with jocular approval how he kept them from thinking:
He recognizes the uses of Religion; takes a good deal of pains
with his Preaching Clergy; will suggest texts to them; and for
the rest expects to be obeyed by them, as by his Sergeants and
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