| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: spirit. If the one is sordid, both are sordid; and equally so,
since the end in view is precisely the same in both cases. And
in both cases Temperament decides the preference--and Temperament
is BORN, not made.
Conclusion
O.M. You have been taking a holiday?
Y.M. Yes; a mountain tramp covering a week. Are you ready to talk?
O.M. Quite ready. What shall we begin with?
Y.M. Well, lying abed resting up, two days and nights, I
have thought over all these talks, and passed them carefully in
review. With this result: that . . . that . . . are you
What is Man? |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: necessary for the purposes of life, and also made the river serve as a
natural drain for rain-water and household refuse. The great works
that the "merchants' provosts" did in this direction are fast
disappearing. Middle-aged persons alone can remember to have seen the
great holes in the rue Montmartre, rue du Temple, etc., down which the
waters poured. Those terrible open jaws were in the olden time of
immense benefit to Paris. Their place will probably be forever marked
by the sudden rise of the paved roadways at the spots where they
opened,--another archaeological detail which will be quite inexplicable
to the historian two centuries hence. One day, about 1816, a little
girl who was carrying a case of diamonds to an actress at the Ambigu,
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Book of Remarkable Criminals by H. B. Irving: Hotel, a few yards from Dyson's house. He was standing under a
gas lamp, and it was a bright moonlight night. The man asked
him if he knew of any strange people who had come to live in the
neighbourhood. Brassington answered that he did not. The man
then produced a bundle of letters which he asked Brassington to
read. But Brassington declined, as reading was not one of his
accomplishments. The man then said that "he would make it a warm
'un for those strange folks before morning--he would shoot both
of them," and went off in the direction of Dyson's house.
Brassington swore positively that Peace was the stranger who had
accosted him that night, and Mr. Lockwood failed to shake him in
A Book of Remarkable Criminals |
