| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: confined to my bed several days; but, youth and a strong constitution
prevailing, I once more crawled out, to ask myself the cruel
question, 'Whither I should go?' I had but two shillings left in
my pocket, the rest had been expended, by a poor woman who slept
in the same room, to pay for my lodging, and purchase the necessaries
of which she partook.
"With this wretch I went into the neighbouring streets to beg,
and my disconsolate appearance drew a few pence from the idle,
enabling me still to command a bed; till, recovering from my illness,
and taught to put on my rags to the best advantage, I was accosted
from different motives, and yielded to the desire of the brutes I
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: dred futile and inappreciable reasons, how--shall
I say odious?--he was to all the countryside.
Every old woman in the village was up in arms.
Smith, coming upon him near the farm, promised
to break his head for him if he found him about
again. But he twisted his little black moustache
with such a bellicose air and rolled such big, black
fierce eyes at Smith that this promise came to noth-
ing. Smith, however, told the girl that she must
be mad to take up with a man who was surely wrong
in his head. All the same, when she heard him in
Amy Foster |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: unguarded hour when the first adventurer who comes along can do violence
to her. The riddle is not solved by such shifts, it is only formulated
in other words. There remains to be explained how a nation of
thirty-six millions can be surprised by three swindlers, and taken to
prison without resistance.
Let us recapitulate in general outlines the phases which the French
revolution of' February 24th, 1848, to December, 1851, ran through.
Three main periods are unmistakable:
First--The February period;
Second--The period of constituting the republic, or of the constitutive
national assembly (May 4, 1848, to May 29th, 1849);
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