| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Letters from England by Elizabeth Davis Bancroft: I was truly grieved that the last steamer should go to Boston
without a line from me, but I was in Yorkshire and you must forgive
me. . . . I left off with the 26th of June. . . . The next evening
was the Queen's Concert, which was most charming. I sat very near
the Duke of Wellington, who often spoke to me between the songs. . .
. The next day we went with Miss Coutts to her bank, lunched there,
and went all over the building. Then we went to the Tower and the
Tunnel together, she never having seen either. So ignorant are the
West End people of city lions. . . . And now comes my pleasant
Yorkshire excursion. We left London, at half-past three, at
distance of 180 miles. This was Saturday, July 8. At York we found
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac: desk, and say in cold blood, 'Cut off a head at four o'clock! Destroy
one of God's creatures full of life, health, and strength!'--And yet
this is my duty! Sunk in grief myself, I must order the scaffold----
"The condemned wretch cannot know that his judge suffers anguish equal
to his own. At this moment he and I, linked by a sheet of paper--I,
society avenging itself; he, the crime to be avenged--embody the same
duty seen from two sides; we are two lives joined for the moment by
the sword of the law.
"Who pities the judge's deep sorrow? Who can soothe it? Our glory is
to bury it in the depth of our heart. The priest with his life given
to God, the soldier with a thousand deaths for his country's sake,
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Vision Splendid by William MacLeod Raine: dissolute and licentious. He had been expelled from college and
consorted only with companions of the lowest sort. A free thinker
and an atheist, he wanted to tear down the pillars which upheld
society. Unless Verden and the state repudiated him and his gang
of trouble breeders the poison of their opinions would infect the
healthy fabric of the community.
There was about Jeff a humility, a sort of careless generosity,
that could take with a laugh a hit at himself. But in the days
that followed he was often made to wince when good men drew away
from him as from a moral pervert. Twice he was hissed from the
stage when he attempted to talk, or would have been, if he had not
|
