| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: England. This patriotic ardor which leads a nation to sacrifice
everything to appearances--to the "paroistre," as d'Aubigne said in
the days of Henri IV.--is the cause of those vast secret labors which
employ the whole of a Parisian woman's morning, when she wishes, as
Madame Rabourdin wished, to keep up on twelve thousand francs a year
the style that many a family with thirty thousand does not indulge in.
Consequently, every Friday,--the day of her dinner parties,--Madame
Rabourdin helped the chambermaid to do the rooms; for the cook went
early to market, and the man-servant was cleaning the silver, folding
the napkins, and polishing the glasses. The ill-advised individual who
might happen, through an oversight of the porter, to enter Madame
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Call of the Wild by Jack London: proceeded to dig a hole for himself. In a trice the heat from his
body filled the confined space and he was asleep. The day had
been long and arduous, and he slept soundly and comfortably,
though he growled and barked and wrestled with bad dreams.
Nor did he open his eyes till roused by the noises of the waking
camp. At first he did not know where he was. It had snowed
during the night and he was completely buried. The snow walls
pressed him on every side, and a great surge of fear swept through
him--the fear of the wild thing for the trap. It was a token that
he was harking back through his own life to the lives of his
forebears; for he was a civilized dog, an unduly civilized dog,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe: I never _will_ go.
No! if it comes to that, I can earn myself at least six feet of
free soil,--the first and last I shall ever own in Kentucky!"
"Why, George, this state of mind is awful; it's getting really
desperate George. I'm concerned. Going to break the laws
of your country!"
"My country again! Mr. Wilson, _you_ have a country; but what
country have _I_, or any one like me, born of slave mothers?
What laws are there for us? We don't make them,--we don't consent
to them,--we have nothing to do with them; all they do for us is
to crush us, and keep us down. Haven't I heard your Fourth-of-July
Uncle Tom's Cabin |
