| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: making far more hideous grimaces. They could repeat with
perfect correctness each word in any sentence we addressed
them, and they remembered such words for some time. Yet
we Europeans all know how difficult it is to distinguish
apart the sounds in a foreign language. Which of us, for
instance, could follow an American Indian through a sentence
of more than three words? All savages appear to possess, to
an uncommon degree, this power of mimicry. I was told,
almost in the same words, of the same ludicrous habit among
the Caffres; the Australians, likewise, have long been notorious
for being able to imitate and describe the gait of any
The Voyage of the Beagle |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: has given rise to an expression, "to be cast on the pavements of Paris."
Let it be said by the way, that this abandonment of children
was not discouraged by the ancient monarchy. A little of Egypt
and Bohemia in the lower regions suited the upper spheres,
and compassed the aims of the powerful. The hatred of instruction
for the children of the people was a dogma. What is the use
of "half-lights"? Such was the countersign. Now, the erring
child is the corollary of the ignorant child.
Besides this, the monarchy sometimes was in need of children,
and in that case it skimmed the streets.
Under Louis XIV., not to go any further back, the king rightly desired
Les Miserables |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac: Jerusalem!" was the answer. But the greater part of the time he gazed
stolidly at his guests without uttering a word; and then his wife
would say, "The good-man does not hear anything to-day."
On two or three occasions in the course of five years, and usually
about the time of the equinox, this remark had driven him to frenzy;
he flourished his knives and shouted, "That joke dishonors me!"
As for his daily life, he ate, drank, and walked about like other men
in sound health; and so it happened that he was treated with about the
same respect and attention that we give to a heavy piece of furniture.
Among his many absurdities was one of which no man had as yet
discovered the object, although by long practice the wiseheads of the
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