| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: they have received by subsequent chagrin and annoyance.
I am aware that, notwithstanding my care, nothing will be
easier than to criticise this book, if anyone ever chooses to
criticise it. Those readers who may examine it closely will
discover the fundamental idea which connects the several parts
together. But the diversity of the subjects I have had to treat
is exceedingly great, and it will not be difficult to oppose an
isolated fact to the body of facts which I quote, or an isolated
idea to the body of ideas I put forth. I hope to be read in the
spirit which has guided my labors, and that my book may be judged
by the general impression it leaves, as I have formed my own
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: inconstancy of the people of Florence, and, fearing the vengeance of
Clement VII., he went to Lyon to superintend a vast house of business
he owned there, which corresponded with other banking-houses of his
own in Venice, Rome, France, and Spain. Here we find a strange thing.
These men who bore the weight of public affairs and of such a struggle
as that with the Medici (not to speak of contentions with their own
party) found time and strength to bear the burden of a vast business
and all its speculations, also of banks and their complications, which
the multiplicity of coinages and their falsification rendered even
more difficult than it is in our day. The name "banker" comes from the
/banc/ (Anglice, /bench/) upon which the banker sat, and on which he
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: colossal breakers were herding in, like moving leviathan-backs,
twice the height of a man. Still the gale grew, and the
billowing waxed mightier, and faster and faster overhead flew the
tatters of torn cloud. The gray morning of the 9th wanly lighted
a surf that appalled the best swimmers: the sea was one wild
agony of foam, the gale was rending off the heads of the waves
and veiling the horizon with a fog of salt spray. Shadowless and
gray the day remained; there were mad bursts of lashing rain.
Evening brought with it a sinister apparition, looming through a
cloud-rent in the west--a scarlet sun in a green sky. His
sanguine disk, enormously magnified, seemed barred like the body
|
