| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: thought of crowds, and nothing more frequent than to see them
execrate to-day what they applauded yesterday.
This total absence of any sort of direction of opinion, and at
the same time the destruction of general beliefs, have had for
final result an extreme divergency of convictions of every order,
and a growing indifference on the part of crowds to everything
that does not plainly touch their immediate interests. Questions
of doctrine, such as socialism, only recruit champions boasting
genuine convictions among the quite illiterate classes, among the
workers in mines and factories, for instance. Members of the
lower middle class, and working men possessing some degree of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lucile by Owen Meredith: That it lay on. The name was--
SIR RIDLEY MACNAB.
Full familiar to him was the name that he saw,
For 'twas that of his own future uncle-in-law.
Mrs. Darcy's rich brother, the banker, well known
As wearing the longest philacteried gown
Of all the rich Pharisees England can boast of,
A shrewd Puritan Scot, whose sharp wits made the most of
This world and the next; having largely invested
Not only where treasure is never molested
By thieves, moth, or rust; but on this earthly ball
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis: through the whole world,--how innumerable children's voices told
it in eager laughter,--how even the lowest slave half-smiled, on
waking, to think it was Christmas-day, the day that Christ was
born. He could hear from the church on the hill that they were
singing again the old song of the angels. Did this matter to
him? Did not he care, with the new throb in his heart, who was
born this day? There is no smile on his face as he listens to
the words, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace,
good-will toward men;" it bends lower,--lower only. But in his
soul-lit eyes there are warm tears, and on his worn face a sad
and solemn joy.
Margret Howth: A Story of To-day |
