| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: exile, declares that any one bearing the name of Henarez must either
be the late Duc de Soria or a lacquey."
He looked at me with eyes like two black burning coals, at once
blazing and ashamed. The man might have been in the torture-chamber.
All he said was:
"My father was in truth the servant of the King of Spain."
Griffith could make nothing of this sort of lesson. An awkward silence
followed each question and answer.
"In one word," I said, "are you a nobleman or not?"
"You know that in Spain even beggars are noble."
This reticence provoked me. Since the last lesson I had given play to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Eryxias by Platonic Imitator: better condition than disease. But when have we the greatest and the most
various needs, when we are sick or when we are well?
CRITIAS: When we are sick.
SOCRATES: And when we are in the worst state we have the greatest and most
especial need and desire of bodily pleasures?
CRITIAS: True.
SOCRATES: And seeing that a man is best off when he is least in need of
such things, does not the same reasoning apply to the case of any two
persons, of whom one has many and great wants and desires, and the other
few and moderate? For instance, some men are gamblers, some drunkards, and
some gluttons: and gambling and the love of drink and greediness are all
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Vailima Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson: it, as I sat in the saddle at the outside of the crowd
(looking, the English consul said, as if I were commanding
the manoeuvres), I was nearly knocked down by a stampede of
the three consuls; they had been waiting their guest at the
Matafele end, and some wretched intrigue among the whites had
brought him to Apia, and the consuls had to run all the
length of the town and come too late.
The next day was a long one; I was at a marriage of G. the
banker to Fanua, the virgin of Apia. Bride and bridesmaids
were all in the old high dress; the ladies were all native;
the men, with the exception of Seumanu, all white.
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