| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Book of Remarkable Criminals by H. B. Irving: [7] Case of Albert and the woman Lavoitte, Paris, 1877.
There are occasions when those feelings of compunction which
troubled Macbeth and his wife are wellnigh proof against the
utmost powers of suggestion, or, as in the case of Hubert and
Prince Arthur, compel the criminal to desist from his enterprise.
A man desires to get rid of his father and mother-in-law. By
means of threats, reproaches and inducements he persuades another
man to commit the crime. Taking a gun, the latter sets out
to do the deed; but he realises the heinousness of it and turns
back. "The next day," he says, "at four o'clock in the morning I
started again. I passed the village church. At the sight of the
A Book of Remarkable Criminals |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac: only have come to a common man or a man of genius. The public always
judges by results. Birotteau passed for a superior man, commercially
speaking; all the more because he compiled a prospectus whose
ridiculous phraseology was an element of success. In France they only
made fun of things which occupy the public mind, and the public does
not occupy itself with things that do not succeed. Though Birotteau
perpetrated this folly in good faith and not as a trick, the world
gave him credit for knowing how to play the fool for a purpose. We
have found, not without difficulty, a copy of this prospectus at the
establishment of Popinot and Co., druggists, Rue des Lombards. This
curious document belongs to the class which, in a higher sphere,
Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: as he struggled, "like a duck with its head off, wriggling", she thought.
She heaved a long sigh, then fell back on to the floor, and was walking
along a little white road with tall black trees on either side, a little
road that led to nowhere, and where nobody walked at all--nobody at all.
11. THE ADVANCED LADY.
"Do you think we might ask her to come with us," said Fraulein Elsa,
retying her pink sash ribbon before my mirror. "You know, although she is
so intellectual, I cannot help feeling convinced that she has some secret
sorrow. And Lisa told me this morning, as she was turning out my room,
that she remains hours and hours by herself, writing; in fact Lisa says she
is writing a book! I suppose that is why she never cares to mingle with
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