| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ursula by Honore de Balzac: fortune and was wholly given up to the management of their immense
establishment. To steal a bale of hay or a bushel of oats or get the
better of Zelie in even the most complicated accounts was a thing
impossible, though she scribbled hardly better than a cat, and knew
nothing of arithmetic but addition and subtraction. She never took a
walk except to look at the hay, the oats, or the second crops. She
sent "her man" to the mowing, and the postilions to tie the bales,
telling them the quantity, within a hundred pounds, each field should
bear. Though she was the soul of that great body called Minoret-
Levrault and led him about by his pug nose, she was made to feel the
fears which occasionally (we are told) assail all tamers of wild
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: realization of such a world but that men should wish it. I
ingeniously set aside-the problem why they did not wish it. I
remember that it was with this definite creative purpose that I
conceived the personality of Siegfried, with the intention of
representing an existence free from pain." But he appeals to his
earlier works to show that behind all these artificial optimistic
ideas there was always with him an intuition of "the sublime
tragedy of renunciation, the negation of the will." In trying to
explain this, he s full of ideas philosophically, and full of the
most amusing contradictions personally. Optimism, as an
accidental excursion into the barren paths of reason on his own
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela: but Camilla, choking down her sobs and wiping her eyes,
said hoarsely:
"Not from you! If I was dying, I wouldn't accept any-
thing from you . . . not even water."
In Cuquio Demetrio received a message.
"We've got to go back to Tepatitlan, General," said
Luis Cervantes, scanning the dispatch rapidly. "You've
got to leave the men there while you go to Lagos and take
the train over to Aguascalientes."
There was much heated protest, the men muttering to
themselves or even groaning out loud. Some of them,
The Underdogs |
