| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: purposes which Juste has carried out, and which I am about to execute.
When we had done talking, we all three went out, cold as it was, to
walk in the Luxembourg gardens till the dinner hour. In the course of
that walk our conversation, grave throughout, turned on the painful
aspects of the political situation. Each of us contributed his
remarks, his comment, or his jest, a pleasantry or a proverb. This was
no longer exclusively a discussion of life on the colossal scale just
described by Marcas, the soldier of political warfare. Nor was it the
distressful monologue of the wrecked navigator, stranded in a garret
in the Hotel Corneille; it was a dialogue in which two well-informed
young men, having gauged the times they lived in, were endeavoring,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Professor by Charlotte Bronte: "Ah, yes! her mouth," said M. Pelet, and he chuckled inwardly.
"There is character about her mouth--firmness--but she has a very
pleasant smile; don't you think so?"
"Rather crafty."
"True, but that expression of craft is owing to her eyebrows;
have you remarked her eyebrows?"
I answered that I had not.
"You have not seen her looking down then?" said he.
"No."
"It is a treat, notwithstanding. Observe her when she has some
knitting, or some other woman's work in hand, and sits the image
The Professor |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Second Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: in detail, of a course to be pursued, seemed fitting and proper.
Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations
have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great
contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies
of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress
of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known
to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory
and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction
in regard to it is ventured.
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts
were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it--
Second Inaugural Address |
