| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: recollections of the old, and has forgotten in its use his own
hereditary tongue.
When these historic configurations of the dead past are closely observed
a striking difference is forthwith noticeable. Camille Desmoulins,
Danton, Robespierre, St. Juste, Napoleon, the heroes as well as the
parties and the masses of the old French revolution, achieved in Roman
costumes and with Roman phrases the task of their time: the emancipation
and the establishment of modern bourgeois society. One set knocked to
pieces the old feudal groundwork and mowed down the feudal heads that
had grown upon it; Napoleon brought about, within France, the conditions
under which alone free competition could develop, the partitioned lands
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: which we sojourned in much state and honour, but I cannot stop to
tell of all these.
One thing I will relate, however, though briefly, because it
changed the regard that the prince Guatemoc and I felt one to the
other into a friendship which lasted till his death, and indeed
endures in my heart to this hour.
One day we were delayed by the banks of a swollen river, and in
pastime went out to hunt for deer. When we had hunted a while and
killed three deer, it chanced that Guatemoc perceived a buck
standing on a hillock, and we set out to stalk it, five of us in
all. But the buck was in the open, and the trees and bush ceased a
Montezuma's Daughter |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: "In a minute, Mama; just five minutes."
"Run along; it's high time; or there will be no getting you
up in the morning to do your lessons."
We would say a lingering good night, on the lookout for any
chance for delay, and at last would go down-stairs through the
arches, annoyed at the thought that we were children still and
had to go to bed while the grown-ups could stay up as long as
ever they liked.
A JOURNEY TO THE STEPPES
WHEN I was still a child and had not yet read "War and Peace," I
was told that Natásha Rostóf was Aunt
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