| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac: intelligence and productive ability. We have seized the idea of
capitalizing for such men their future prospects, and cashing their
talents by discounting--what? TIME; securing the value of it to their
survivors. I may say that it is no longer a question of economizing
time, but of giving it a price, a quotation; of representing in a
pecuniary sense those products developed by time which presumably you
possess in the region of your intellect; of representing also the
moral qualities with which you are endowed, and which are, Monsieur,
living forces,--as living as a cataract, as a steam-engine of three,
ten, twenty, fifty horse-power. Ha! this is progress! the movement
onward to a better state of things; a movement born of the spirit of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Patchwork Girl of Oz by L. Frank Baum: "Good! there's a house at last," cried Ojo.
"When we reach it the good people will surely
welcome us and give us a night's lodging." But
however far they walked the light seemed to get
no nearer, so by and by the cat stopped short,
saying:
"I think the light is traveling, too, and we
shall never be able to catch up with it. But here
is a house by the roadside, so why go farther?"
"Where is the house, Bungle?"
"Just here beside us, Scraps."
The Patchwork Girl of Oz |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Lesser Bourgeoisie by Honore de Balzac: expression did not escape an observer of la Peyrade's strength, but
not being a man to advance very far on a single remark he merely
replied:--
"Madame, the vulgar expression, to 'settle down,' explains this
situation, in which a man, after many struggles and being at an end of
his efforts and his illusions, makes a compromise with the future.
When this compromise takes the form of a young girl with, I admit,
more virtue than beauty, but one who brings to a husband the fortune
which is indispensable to the comfort of married life, what is there
so astonishing in the fact that his heart yields to gratitude and that
he welcomes the prospect of a placid happiness?"
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