| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac: itself of any means, which has none of the hyprocrisy of high-handed
justice, but is the hideous outcome of the starving stomach--the swift
and bloodthirsty pretext of hunger. Is it not attack as against self-
protection, theft as against property? The terrible quarrel between
the social state and the natural man, fought out on the narrowest
possible ground! In short, it is a terrible and vivid image of those
compromises, hostile to social interests, which the representatives of
authority, when they lack power, submit to with the fiercest rebels.
When Monsieur Camusot was announced, the public prosecutor signed that
he should be admitted. Monsieur de Granville had foreseen this visit,
and wished to come to an understanding with the examining judge as to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg by Mark Twain: as an impossible English earl, had been watching the evening's
proceedings with manifest interest, and with a contented expression
in his face; and he had been privately commenting to himself. He
was now soliloquising somewhat like this: 'None of the Eighteen are
bidding; that is not satisfactory; I must change that--the dramatic
unities require it; they must buy the sack they tried to steal; they
must pay a heavy price, too--some of them are rich. And another
thing, when I make a mistake in Hadleyburg nature the man that puts
that error upon me is entitled to a high honorarium, and some one
must pay. This poor old Richards has brought my judgment to shame;
he is an honest man:--I don't understand it, but I acknowledge it.
The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Human Drift by Jack London: based on so absolute an ignorance of facts. It is to laugh. Here
is a climate that breeds vigour, with just sufficient geniality to
prevent the expenditure of most of that vigour in fighting the
elements. Here is a climate where a man can work three hundred
and sixty-five days in the year without the slightest hint of
enervation, and where for three hundred and sixty-five nights he
must perforce sleep under blankets. What more can one say? I
consider myself somewhat of climate expert, having adventured
among most of the climates of five out of the six zones. I have
not yet been in the Antarctic, but whatever climate obtains there
will not deter me from drawing the conclusion that nowhere is
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