| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas: told you, Mademoiselle de Villefort and your young son were
absent, you conversed for a considerable time with
somebody?"
"Yes, in truth, yes," answered the young lady, turning very
red, "I do remember conversing with a person wrapped in a
long woollen mantle; he was a medical man, I think."
"Precisely so, madame; this man was myself; for a fortnight
I had been at that hotel, during which period I had cured my
valet de chambre of a fever, and my landlord of the
jaundice, so that I really acquired a reputation as a
skilful physician. We discoursed a long time, madame, on
The Count of Monte Cristo |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: "But it was a water-baby, and I heard it speak!" cried Ellie. "Ah,
it is gone!" And she jumped down off the rock, to try and catch
Tom before he slipped into the sea.
Too late! and what was worse, as she sprang down, she slipped, and
fell some six feet, with her head on a sharp rock, and lay quite
still.
The professor picked her up, and tried to waken her, and called to
her, and cried over her, for he loved her very much: but she would
not waken at all. So he took her up in his arms and carried her to
her governess, and they all went home; and little Ellie was put to
bed, and lay there quite still; only now and then she woke up and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Country Doctor by Honore de Balzac: them, uses them ill and cheats them of their due, how can we expect
the poor starving wretches to bear their troubles meekly and to
respect the rights of property? It makes me shudder to think that some
understrapper whose business it is to dust papers in a government
office, has pocketed Gondrin's promised thousand francs of pension.
And yet there are folk who, never having measured the excess of the
people's sufferings, accuse the people of excess in the day of their
vengeance! When a government has done more harm than good to
individuals, its further existence depends on the merest accident, the
masses square the account after their fashion by upsetting it. A
statesman ought always to imagine Justice with the poor at her feet,
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