| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: "is that Mr. Casaubon was spiteful. I never did like him, and James
never did. I think the corners of his mouth were dreadfully spiteful.
And now he has behaved in this way, I am sure religion does not
require you to make yourself uncomfortable about him. If he has
been taken away, that is a mercy, and you ought to be grateful.
We should not grieve, should we, baby?" said Celia confidentially
to that unconscious centre and poise of the world, who had the most
remarkable fists all complete even to the nails, and hair enough,
really, when you took his cap off, to make--you didn't know what:--
in short, he was Bouddha in a Western form.
At this crisis Lydgate was announced, and one of the first things he
Middlemarch |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: handsomest spot in the Californy mountains" had produced a
petrified forest, which Mr. Evans now shows at the modest
figure of half a dollar a head, or two-thirds of his capital
when he first came there with an axe and a sciatica.
This tardy favourite of fortune - hobbling a little, I think,
as if in memory of the sciatica, but with not a trace that I
can remember of the sea - thoroughly ruralized from head to
foot, proceeded to escort us up the hill behind his house.
"Who first found the forest?" asked my wife.
"The first? I was that man," said he. "I was cleaning up
the pasture for my beasts, when I found THIS" - kicking a
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: into public life, and thereby lose their fortunes. The firm of Necker,
for instance, was ruined in this way; the famous Samuel Bernard was
all but ruined. Some great capitalist in every age makes a colossal
fortune, and leaves behind him neither fortune nor a family; there was
the firm of Paris Brothers, for instance, that helped to pull down
Law; there was Law himself (beside whom other promoters of companies
are but pigmies); there was Bouret and Beaujon--none of them left any
representative. Finance, like Time, devours its own children. If the
banker is to perpetuate himself, he must found a noble house, a
dynasty; like the Fuggers of Antwerp, that lent money to Charles V.
and were created Princes of Babenhausen, a family that exists at this
|
