| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Unconscious Comedians by Honore de Balzac: "Which state councillor presides over your section?"
"A former newspaper man,--doesn't pay ten sous in taxes,--his name is
Massol."
The two Parisians exchanged glances.
"Who is the commissioner who is making the report?"
"Ha! that's still more queer; he's Master of Petitions, professor of
something or other at the Sorbonne,--a fellow who writes things in
reviews, and for whom I have the profoundest contempt."
"Claude Vignon," said Bixiou.
"Yes, that's his name," replied Gazonal. "Massol and Vignon--there you
have Social Reason, in which there's no reason at all."
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Country Doctor by Honore de Balzac: himself; he could keep a fire in his kiln and could put a price on his
work, and that was about all he knew; he had no energy, and no idea of
business. If no one came to buy his wares of him, they simply stayed
on hand and were spoiled, and so he lost the value of them. So he died
of want at last. He had ill-treated his wife till she was almost
idiotic, and she lived in a state of abject wretchedness. It was so
painful to see this laziness and incurable stupidity, and I so much
disliked the sight of the tile-works, that I never came this way if I
could help it. Luckily, both the man and his wife were old people. One
fine day the tile-maker had a paralytic stroke, and I had him removed
to the hospital at Grenoble at once. The owner of the tile-works
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg by Mark Twain: wonderful endorsement of it, and hoped and believed that the example
would now spread far and wide over the American world, and be epoch-
making in the matter of moral regeneration. And so on, and so on.
By the end of a week things had quieted down again; the wild
intoxication of pride and joy had sobered to a soft, sweet, silent
delight--a sort of deep, nameless, unutterable content. All faces
bore a look of peaceful, holy happiness.
Then a change came. It was a gradual change; so gradual that its
beginnings were hardly noticed; maybe were not noticed at all,
except by Jack Halliday, who always noticed everything; and always
made fun of it, too, no matter what it was. He began to throw out
The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg |
