| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: fatalism (as if any Oriental has ever submitted more helplessly and
sheepishly to robbery and oppression than we Occidentals do), to be
driven day after day into compounds and set to the tasks they loathe
by the men they hate and fear, as if this were the inevitable destiny
of mankind. And naturally, when they grow up, they helplessly
exchange the prison of the school for the prison of the mine or the
workshop or the office, and drudge along stupidly and miserably, with
just enough gregarious instinct to turn furiously on any intelligent
person who proposes a change. It would be quite easy to make England
a paradise, according to our present ideas, in a few years. There is
no mystery about it: the way has been pointed out over and over
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Gambara by Honore de Balzac: dreams. He fancied himself transported into the scenery of his native
land, where that beautiful Italian landscape begins at what Napoleon
so cleverly described as the /glacis/ of the Alps. Carried back by
memory to the time when his young and eager brain was as yet
untroubled by the ecstasy of his too exuberant imagination he listened
with religious awe and would not utter a single word. The Count
respected the internal travail of his soul. Till half-past twelve
Gambara sat so perfectly motionless that the frequenters of the opera
house took him, no doubt, for what he was--a man drunk.
On their return, Andrea began to attack Meyerbeer's work, in order to
wake up Gambara, who sat sunk in the half-torpid state common in
Gambara |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Purse by Honore de Balzac: "Yes, one more to mark," said he.
"Shall I come and advise you?" said Adelaide.
"No, no. Stay where I can see you. By Gad, it would be losing too
much not to have you to look at!"
At last the game was over. The gentleman pulled out his purse,
and, throwing two louis d'or on the table, not without temper--
"Forty francs," he exclaimed, "the exact sum.--Deuce take it! It
is eleven o'clock."
"It is eleven o'clock," repeated the silent figure, looking at
the painter.
The young man, hearing these words rather more distinctly than
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