| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The American by Henry James: upon which I have touched, it might be supposed that Newman passed
a great many dull days. But the dullness of his days pleased him;
his melancholy, which was settling into a secondary stage,
like a healing wound, had in it a certain acrid, palatable sweetness.
He had company in his thoughts, and for the present he wanted no other.
He had no desire to make acquaintances, and he left untouched a couple
of notes of introduction which had been sent him by Tom Tristram.
He thought a great deal of Madame de Cintre--sometimes with a dogged
tranquillity which might have seemed, for a quarter of an hour
at a time, a near neighbor to forgetfulness. He lived over again
the happiest hours he had known--that silver chain of numbered days
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: makes the beginners worse than they were when they went into
captivity. It is putting a very severe punishment upon the
comparatively innocent at times. They hang a man--which is a
trifling punishment; this breaks the hearts of his family--which
is a heavy one. They comfortably jail and feed a wife-beater,
and leave his innocent wife and family to starve.
Y.M. Do you believe in the doctrine that man is equipped
with an intuitive perception of good and evil?
O.M. Adam hadn't it.
Y.M. But has man acquired it since?
O.M. No. I think he has no intuitions of any kind. He
What is Man? |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Start in Life by Honore de Balzac: magnificent estate of the Comte de Serizy, called Presles. This farm
belonged to a burgher of Beaumont-sur-Oise, named Margueron. The lease
made to Leger in 1799, at a time when the great advance of agriculture
was not foreseen, was about to expire, and the owner of the farm
refused all offers from Leger to renew the lease. For some time past,
Monsieur de Serizy, wishing to rid himself of the annoyances and petty
disputes caused by the inclosure of these fields within his land, had
desired to buy the farm, having heard that Monsieur Margueron's chief
ambition was to have his only son, then a mere tax-gatherer, made
special collector of finances at Beaumont. The farmer, who knew he
could sell the fields piecemeal to the count at a high price, was
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