| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Finished by H. Rider Haggard: Once out of the town we saw no one until we came to the circle of
guards which I have already mentioned, who stood there like an
endless line of black statues. In answer to their challenge Goza
gave some complicated password in which my name occurred, whereon
they opened out and let us through. Then we marched on to the
mouth of the kloof. The place was very dark, for now the sun was
down in the west and the moon in the east was cut off from us by
the hills and would not be visible here for half an hour or more.
Presently I saw a spot of light. It was a small fire burning
near the tongue of rock which I have described.
At a distance, in front of the fire on the patch of prepared
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: days on horseback and in his saddle.
The throng of aspirants has necessitated a division of the Faculty of
Medicine into categories. There is the physician who writes and the
physician who practises, the political physician, and the physician
militant--four different ways of being a physician, four classes
already filled up. As to the fifth class, that of physicians who sell
remedies, there is such a competition that they fight each other with
disgusting advertisements on the walls of Paris.
In all the law courts there are almost as many lawyers as there are
cases. The pleader is thrown back on journalism, on politics, on
literature. In fact, the State, besieged for the smallest appointments
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Cousin Pons by Honore de Balzac: walked side by side along their beat of boulevard, the idlers of the
quarter dubbed them "the pair of nutcrackers," a nickname which makes
any portrait of Schmucke quite superfluous, for he was to Pons as the
famous statue of the Nurse of Niobe in the Vatican is to the Tribune
Venus.
Mme. Cibot, portress of the house in the Rue de Normandie, was the
pivot on which the domestic life of the nutcrackers turned; but Mme.
Cibot plays so large a part in the drama which grew out of their
double existence, that it will be more appropriate to give her
portrait on her first appearance in this Scene of Parisian Life.
One thing remains to be said of the characters of the pair of friends;
|
