| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce: they will use a charge of grape. I must keep my eye upon
the gun; the smoke will apprise me -- the report arrives too
late; it lags behind the missile. That is a good gun."
Suddenly he felt himself whirled round and round -- spinning
like a top. The water, the banks, the forests, the now
distant bridge, fort and men, all were commingled and
blurred. Objects were represented by their colors only;
circular horizontal streaks of color -- that was all he saw.
He had been caught in a vortex and was being whirled on with
a velocity of advance and gyration that made him giddy and
sick. In few moments he was flung upon the gravel at the
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: "It often beats as fast when I run," she said.
Seraphitus inclined his head with a gesture that was neither coldness
nor indifference, and yet, despite the grace which made the movement
almost tender, it none the less bespoke a certain negation, which in a
woman would have seemed an exquisite coquetry. Seraphitus clasped the
young girl in his arms. Minna accepted the caress as an answer to her
words, continuing to gaze at him. As he raised his head, and threw
back with impatient gesture the golden masses of his hair to free his
brow, he saw an expression of joy in the eyes of his companion.
"Yes, Minna," he said in a voice whose paternal accents were charming
from the lips of a being who was still adolescent, "Keep your eyes on
Seraphita |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome: practically an extension of the party organization. This, of
course, would be indignantly denied both by Trade
Unionists and Communists. Still, in the preface to the
All-Russian Trades Union Reports for 1919, Glebov, one of
the best-known Trade Union leaders whom I remember in
the spring of last year objecting to the use of bourgeois
specialists in their proper places, admits as much in the
following muddleheaded statement:-
"The base of the proletarian dictatorship is the Communist
Party, which in general directs all the political and economic
work of the State, leaning, first of all, on the Soviets as on
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