| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: by capitulating entirely, and has settled down into a sinecure, like
any other commonplace man. After lending his pen to all disorganizing
efforts, he now lives in peace under the protecting shade of a
ministerial organ. The cross of the Legion of honor, formerly the
fruitful text of his satire, adorns his button-hole. "Peace at any
price," ridicule of which was the stock-in-trade of his revolutionary
editorship, is now the topic of his laudatory articles. Heredity,
attacked by him in Saint-Simonian phrases, he now defends with solid
arguments. This illogical conduct has its origin and its explanation
in the change of front performed by many men besides Raoul during our
recent political evolutions.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Marie by H. Rider Haggard: "Look! baas, here comes one of my brothers," or, in other words, a
Hottentot.
Following the line of his hand, I saw a thin and wretched creature, clad
only in some rags and the remains of a big hat with the crown out,
staggering towards us between the trees.
"Why!" exclaimed Marie in a startled voice, for, as usual, she was at my
side, "it is Klaus, one of my cousin Hernan's after-riders."
"So long as it is not your cousin Hernan himself, I do not care," I
said.
Presently the poor, starved "Totty" arrived, and throwing himself down,
begged for food. A cold shoulder of buck was given to him, which he
Marie |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Lesson of the Master by Henry James: fancy!" she beautifully wailed.
"That depends on what his ideal may have been. With his gifts it
ought to have been high. But till one knows what he really
proposed to himself - ? Do YOU know by chance?" the young man
broke off.
"Oh he doesn't talk to me about himself. I can't make him. It's
too provoking."
Paul was on the point of asking what then he did talk about, but
discretion checked it and he said instead: "Do you think he's
unhappy at home?"
She seemed to wonder. "At home?"
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