| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen: gave greater openings for her charms. She was now seen
by many young men who had not been near her before.
Not one, however, started with rapturous wonder on
beholding her, no whisper of eager inquiry ran round
the room, nor was she once called a divinity by anybody.
Yet Catherine was in very good looks, and had the company
only seen her three years before, they would now have thought
her exceedingly handsome.
She was looked at, however, and with some admiration;
for, in her own hearing, two gentlemen pronounced her
to be a pretty girl. Such words had their due effect;
Northanger Abbey |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: over the young Spartans a public guardian, the Paidonomos[4] or
"pastor," to give them his proper title,[5] with complete authority
over them. This guardian was selected from those who filled the
highest magistracies. He had authority to hold musters of the boys,[6]
and as their overseer, in case of any misbehaviour, to chastise
severely. The legislator further provided his pastor with a body of
youths in the prime of life, and bearing whips,[7] to inflict
punishment when necessary, with this happy result that in Sparta
modesty and obedience ever go hand in hand, nor is there lack of
either.
[4] = "boyherd."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac: catch five or six thousand francs in the frozen seas, in the domain of
the red Indians who inhabit the interior of France. The provincial
fish will not rise to harpoons and torches; it can only be taken with
seines and nets and gentlest persuasions. The traveller's business is
to extract the gold in country caches by a purely intellectual
operation, and to extract it pleasantly and without pain. Can you
think without a shudder of the flood of phrases which, day by day,
renewed each dawn, leaps in cascades the length and breadth of sunny
France?
You know the species; let us now take a look at the individual.
There lives in Paris an incomparable commercial traveller, the paragon
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