The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome: or three politically minded musicians , the orchestra vanished
away and the Conference began.
Unlike many of the meetings and conferences at which I
have been present in Russia, this Jaroslavl Conference
seemed to me to include practically none but men and
women who either were or had been actual manual workers.
I looked over row after row of faces in the theatre, and
could only find two faces which I thought might be Jewish,
and none that obviously belonged to the "intelligentsia." I
found on inquiry that only three of the Communists present,
excluding Radek and Larin, were old exiled and imprisoned
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: "That is the headsman," answered M. Ragon, calling the executioner--
the executeur des hautes oeuvres--by the name he had borne under the
Monarchy.
"Oh! my dear, my dear! M. l'Abbe is dying!" cried out old Madame
Ragon. She caught up a flask of vinegar, and tried to restore the old
priest to consciousness.
"He must have given me the handkerchief that the King used to wipe his
brow on the way to his martyrdom," murmured he. " . . . Poor man!
. . . There was a heart in the steel blade, when none was found in all
France . . . "
The perfumers thought that the poor abbe was raving.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Black Dwarf by Walter Scott: persecution were blown over!"
"Would to God it had been so, my dear Lucy!" answered Isabella;
"but I fear, that, in your father's weak state of health, he
would be altogether unable to protect me against the means which
would be immediately used for reclaiming the poor fugitive."
"I fear so indeed," replied Miss Ilderton; "but we will consider
and devise something. Now that your father and his guests seem
so deeply engaged in some mysterious plot, to judge from the
passing and returning of messages, from the strange faces which
appear and disappear without being announced by their names, from
the collecting and cleaning of arms, and the anxious gloom and
|